Stanford Electrical Engineering Eventshttps://ee.stanford.edu/events
en2018 Commencement Ceremonyhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/department/2018-commencement-ceremony
<p>Please join us to celebrate the class of 2018 Electrical Engineers!</p>
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<p>Additional <strong><a href="https://ee.stanford.edu/academics/commencement">Commencement Information for Electrical Engineers</a></strong>.</p>
2018-06-17 19:00:00 to 2018-06-17 23:30:00varioushttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/2995Theory Seminar presents Nikhil Srivastavahttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/theory-seminar-presents-nikhil-srivastava
<hr /><p><em>Stanford Theory Seminar (formerly known as Stanford Algorithms Seminar/AFLB) is usually held in Gates 498 or Theory Lounge(Gates 463A).</em><br /><strong>Faculty Contact: <a href="https://sites.google.com/site/marywootters/" target="_blank">Mary Wootters</a></strong><br />Student Contact: Shashwat Silas</p>
2018-05-24 23:15:00Nikhil Srivastavahttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/3061Theory Seminar presents Pooya Hatamihttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/theory-seminar-presents-pooya-hatami
<hr /><p><em>Stanford Theory Seminar (formerly known as Stanford Algorithms Seminar/AFLB) is usually held in Gates 498 or Theory Lounge(Gates 463A).</em><br /><strong>Faculty Contact: <a href="https://sites.google.com/site/marywootters/" target="_blank">Mary Wootters</a></strong><br />Student Contact: Shashwat Silas</p>
2018-05-10 23:15:00Pooya Hatamihttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/3060Theory Seminar presents Santosh Vempalahttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/theory-seminar-presents-santosh-vempala
<hr /><p><em>Stanford Theory Seminar (formerly known as Stanford Algorithms Seminar/AFLB) is usually held in Gates 498 or Theory Lounge(Gates 463A).</em><br /><strong>Faculty Contact: <a href="https://sites.google.com/site/marywootters/" target="_blank">Mary Wootters</a></strong><br />Student Contact: Shashwat Silas</p>
2018-05-03 23:15:00Santosh Vempalahttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/3059Undergraduate Admit Weekendhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/undergraduate-admit-weekend-0
<p><strong>Welcome admitted students! </strong></p>
<p>Enjoy your time on campus and feel free to stop by the Packard Electrical Engineering Building.</p>
<ul><li>Information for EE's <a href="https://ee.stanford.edu/admissions/bs/prospective-undergrads">Prospective Undergraduates</a>.</li>
<li>Maker <a href="https://ee.stanford.edu/student-resources/lab64">lab64</a></li>
<li>EE <a href="https://ee.stanford.edu/admissions/bs">B.S. program</a> overview</li>
<li><a href="https://ee.stanford.edu/academics/reu">Research Experience</a> for Undergrads (REU)</li>
<li>EE <a href="https://ee.stanford.edu/spotlight">Spotlight</a> profiles</li>
</ul>2018-04-26 15:30:00 to 2018-04-28 19:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2989IT-Forum: Topic TBAhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/it-forum-topic-tba-1
<p>Description TBA</p>
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<p>The Information Theory Forum (IT-Forum) at Stanford ISL is an interdisciplinary academic forum which focuses on mathematical aspects of information processing. With a primary emphasis on information theory, we also welcome researchers from signal processing, learning and statistical inference, control and optimization to deliver talks at our forum. We also warmly welcome industrial affiliates in the above fields. The forum is typically held in Packard 202 every Friday at 1:15 pm during the academic year.</p>
<p>The Information Theory Forum is organized by graduate students Jiantao Jiao and Yanjun Han. To suggest speakers, please contact any of the students.</p>
2018-04-13 20:15:00Jun Chen (McMaster University)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3014Networking Seminar presents Wenting Zhenghttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/networking-seminar-presents-wenting-zheng
<hr /><p>Stanford's NetSeminar is a biweekly seminar covering networking-related topics. Speakers come from academia and industry and the talks are open to the public. When possible, talks will be recorded and posted online. We typically start at 12:15pm at Gates Bld — Room 104, unless otherwise mentioned.</p>
<p>NetSeminar is run by graduate students, and it is generously supported by the Stanford Computer Forum.</p>
2018-04-05 19:15:00Wenting Zheng (UC Berkeley)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3066The 2018 Robert Hofstadter Memorial Lecture: The Dawn of Gravitational-Wave Astrophysicshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/general/2018-robert-hofstadter-memorial-lecture-dawn-gravitational-wave-astrophysics
<p>In the past two years the gravitational-wave detections enabled by the LIGO detectors have launched a new field in observational astronomy allowing us to study compact object mergers involving pairs of black holes and neutron stars. I will discuss what current results reveal about compact object astrophysics, from binary black hole formation to short gamma-ray bursts and nuclear matter physics. I will also highlight what we can expect in the near future as detectors' sensitivity improves and multi-messenger astronomy further advances.</p>
2018-04-03 23:30:00Prof. Vicky Kalogera (Daniel I. Linzer Distinguished University Professor Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, Northwestern University)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3112The 2018 Robert Hofstadter Memorial Lecture: Cosmic Collisions Reveal Einstein&#039;s Gravitational-Wave Universehttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/general/2018-robert-hofstadter-memorial-lecture-cosmic-collisions-reveal-einsteins
<p>For the first time, scientists have observed ripples in the fabric of spacetime called gravitational waves, arriving at the earth from a cataclysmic event in the distant universe. This confirms a major prediction of Albert Einstein's 1915 general theory of relativity and opens an unprecedented new window onto the cosmos. Gravitational waves carry unique information about their dramatic origins and about the nature of gravity that cannot otherwise be obtained. Detected gravitational waves were produced during the final fraction of a second of the mergers of two black holes but also during the last hundred seconds of the collision of two neutron stars. The latter is the first ever cosmic event to be observed both in gravitational waves and in electromagnetic waves, shedding light on several long-standing puzzles, like the production of gold in nature and the physics origins of brief gamma-ray flashes. I will review the beginnings of this exciting field of cosmic exploration and the unprecedented technology and engineering that made it possible.</p>
2018-04-03 02:30:00Prof. Vicky Kalogera (Daniel I. Linzer Distinguished University Professor Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, Northwestern University)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3111Spring Quarter Beginshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/general/spring-quarter-begins-0
<p>Spring 2018 quarter begins.</p>
2018-04-02 07:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3113SCIEN presents Video-based Reconstruction of the Real World in Motionhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/general/scien-presents-video-based-reconstruction-real-world-motion
<p>New methods for capturing highly detailed models of moving real world scenes with cameras, i.e., models of detailed deforming geometry, appearance or even material properties, become more and more important in many application areas. They are needed in visual content creation, for instance in visual effects, where they are needed to build highly realistic models of virtual human actors. Further on, efficient, reliable and highly accurate dynamic scene reconstruction is nowadays an important prerequisite for many other application domains, such as: human-computer and human-robot interaction, autonomous robotics and autonomous driving, virtual and augmented reality, 3D and free-viewpoint TV, immersive telepresence, and even video editing.</p>
<p>The development of dynamic scene reconstruction methods has been a long standing challenge in computer graphics and computer vision. Recently, the field has seen important progress. New methods were developed that capture - without markers or scene instrumentation - rather detailed models of individual moving humans or general deforming surfaces from video recordings, and capture even simple models of appearance and lighting. However, despite this recent progress, the field is still at an early stage, and current technology is still starkly constrained in many ways. Many of today's state-of-the-art methods are still niche solutions that are designed to work under very constrained conditions, for instance: only in controlled studios, with many cameras, for very specific object types, for very simple types of motion and deformation, or at processing speeds far from real-time.</p>
<p>In this talk, I will present some of our recent works on detailed marker-less dynamic scene reconstruction and performance capture in which we advanced the state of the art in several ways. For instance, I will briefly show new methods for marker-less capture of the full body (like our VNECT approach) and hands that work in more general environments, and even in real-time and with one camera. I will then show some of our work on high-quality face performance capture and face reenactment. Here, I will also illustrate the benefits of both model-based and learning-based approaches and show how different ways to join the forces of the two open up new possibilities. Live demos included!</p>
2018-03-21 23:30:00Christian Theobalt (Max-Planck-Institute for Informatics))https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3134Finals Weekhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/general/finals-week
<p>March 19-23 (Mon-Fri) End-Quarter examinations</p>
2018-03-19 07:00:00 to 2018-03-23 07:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2988MATSCI 230: Materials Science Colloquium presents Vivian Ferryhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/matsci-230-materials-science-colloquium-presents-vivian-ferry
<p>TBA</p>
2018-03-16 22:00:00Vivian Ferryhttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/3052IT-Forum &amp; ISL presents Robust sequential change-point detectionhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/it-forum-isl-presents-robust-sequential-change-point-detection
<p>Sequential change-point detection is a fundamental problem in statistics and signal processing, with broad applications in security, network monitoring, imaging, and genetics. Given a sequence of data, the goal is to detect any change in the underlying distribution as quickly as possible from the streaming data. Various algorithms have been developed including the commonly used CUSUM procedure. However, there is a still a gap when applying change-point detection methods to real problems, notably, due to the lack of robustness. Classic approaches usually require exact specification of the pre and post change distributions forms, which may be quite restrictive and do not perform well with real data. On the other hand, Huber’s classic robust statistics built based on least favorable distributions are not directly applicable since they are computationally intractable in the multi-dimensional setting. In this seminar, I will present several of our recent works in developing computationally efficient and robust change-point detection algorithms with certain near optimality properties, by building a connection of statistical sequential analysis with (online) convex optimization.</p>
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<hr /><p> </p>
<p>The Information Theory Forum (IT-Forum) at Stanford ISL is an interdisciplinary academic forum which focuses on mathematical aspects of information processing. With a primary emphasis on information theory, we also welcome researchers from signal processing, learning and statistical inference, control and optimization to deliver talks at our forum. We also warmly welcome industrial affiliates in the above fields. The forum is typically held in Packard 202 every Friday at 1:15 pm during the academic year.</p>
<p>The Information Theory Forum is organized by graduate students Jiantao Jiao and Yanjun Han. To suggest speakers, please contact any of the students.</p>
2018-03-16 20:15:00Yao Xie (Georgia Tech)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3013Last day of classes, Winter Quarterhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/general/last-day-classes-winter-quarter
<p>2018, March 16 (Fri) Last day of classes (unless class meets on Saturday).</p>
2018-03-16 07:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2987Reynolds Memorial Seminar presents &quot;Toward Pervasive Robots&quot;https://ee.stanford.edu/event/general/reynolds-memorial-seminar-presents-toward-pervasive-robots
<p>The digitization of practically everything coupled with the mobile Internet, the automation of knowledge work, and advanced robotics promises a future with democratized use of machines and wide-spread use of robots and customization. However, pervasive use of robots remains a hard problem. For any give task, the body of the robot has to be able to execute the task and the brain of the robot has to be able to control the body to deliver on that task. How can we accelerate the creation of robots customized to specific tasks? Where are the gaps that we need to address in order to advance toward a future where robots are common in the world and they help reliably with physical tasks? What are the roles of design, fabrication, and control along this trajectory?</p>
<p>In this talk Prof. Rus will discuss the use of computational design and fabrication toward pervasive use of robots. Prof. Rus will introduce recent developments in algorithms for customizing robots, focusing on a suite of algorithms for automatically designing, fabricating, and tasking robots using modularity, soft materials, and print-and-fold approaches. She will also describe how computation can play a role in creating robots more capable of reasoning in the world. By enabling on-demand creation of robots, we can begin to imagine a world with one robot for every physical task.</p>
2018-03-16 00:30:00Dr. Daniela Rus (Viterbi Professor Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, MIT)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3133E 311A: Women&#039;s Perspectives in Engineering presents Eugénie Riveshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/e-311a-womens-perspectives-engineering-presents-eug%25C3%25A9nie-rives
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<hr /><p>The ME Graduate Women's Group has offered ME/ENGR 311A: Women's Perspectives, a 1-unit credit seminar, every year since the group's inception in 1998. For credit or not, everyone is welcome to come! Speakers are asked to address the factors, experiences, and lessons that have been particularly important to their success in industry, academia, and... life.</p>
2018-03-15 23:30:00Eugénie Rives, Operations Manager, Xhttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/3045SystemX Seminar: Toward Managing the Complexity of Molecules: Letting Matter Compute Itselfhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/systemx-seminar-toward-managing-complexity-molecules-letting-matter-compute-itself
<p>Person-millenia are spent each year seeking useful molecules for medicine, food, agriculture and other uses. For biomolecules, the near infinite universe of possibilities is staggering and humbling. As an example, antibodies, which make up the majority of the top-grossing medicines today, are comprised of 1,100 amino acids chosen from the twenty used by living things. The binding part (variable region) that allows the antibody to bind and recognize pathogens, is about 110 amino acids, giving rise to 10143 possible combinations. There are only about 1080 atoms in the universe, illustrating the intractability of exploring the entire space of possibility. This is just one example…</p>
<p>Presently, machine learning (ML), artificial intelligence (AI), quantum computing, and “big data” are often put forth as the solutions to all problems, particularly by pontificating TED presenters and in Sand Hill pitches dripping with hyperbole. Expecting these methods to provide intelligent prediction of molecular structure and function within our lifetimes is unrealistic. For example, a neural network trained on daily weather patterns in Palo Alto cannot develop an internal model for global weather. In a similar way, finite and reasonable molecular training sets will not magically cause a generalizable model of molecular quantum mechanics to arise within a neural network, no matter how many layers it is endowed with.</p>
<p>With that provocative preface, we turn to the notion of letting matter compute itself. Massive combinatorial libraries can now be intelligently and efficiently mined with appropriate molecular readouts (AKA “the question vector”) at ever-increasing throughputs presently surpassing 1012 unique molecules in a few hours. Once “matter-in-the-loop” exploration is embraced, AI, ML and other methods can be brought to bear usefully in closed-loop methods to follow veins of opportunity in molecular space. Several examples of mining massive molecular spaces will be presented, including drug discovery, digital pathology, and AI-guided continuous-flow chemical synthesis – all real, all working today.</p>
2018-03-15 23:30:00 to 2018-03-16 00:30:00Greg Kovacs - President, Biosciences Division - SRI Bioscienceshttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/3128Networking Seminar presents Arjun Singhvihttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/networking-seminar-presents-arjun-singhvi
<hr /><p>Stanford's NetSeminar is a biweekly seminar covering networking-related topics. Speakers come from academia and industry and the talks are open to the public. When possible, talks will be recorded and posted online. We typically start at 12:15pm at Gates Bld — Room 104, unless otherwise mentioned.</p>
<p>NetSeminar is run by graduate students, and it is generously supported by the Stanford Computer Forum.</p>
2018-03-15 19:15:00Arjun Singhvi (UW-Madison)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3065SCIEN Talk: Drone IoT Networks for Virtual Human Teleportationhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/scien-talk-drone-iot-networks-virtual-human-teleportation
<p>Cyber-physical/human systems (CPS/CHS) are set to play an increasingly visible role in our lives, advancing research and technology across diverse disciplines. I am exploring novel synergies between three emerging CPS/CHS technologies of prospectively broad societal impact, virtual/augmented reality (VR/AR), the Internet of Things (IoT), and autonomous micro-aerial robots (UAVs). My long-term research objective is UAV-IoT-deployed ubiquitous VR/AR immersive communication that can enable virtual human teleportation to any corner of the world. Thereby, we can achieve a broad range of technological and societal advances that will enhance energy conservation, quality of life, and the global economy.<br />I am investigating fundamental problems at the intersection of signal acquisition and representation, communications and networking, (embedded) sensors and systems, and rigorous machine learning for stochastic control that arise in this context. I envision a future where UAV-IoT-deployed immersive communication systems will break existing barriers in remote sensing, monitoring, localization and mapping, navigation, and scene understanding. The presentation will outline some of my present and envisioned investigations. Interdisciplinary applications will be highlighted.</p>
2018-03-14 23:30:00Jacob Chakareski (University of Alabama)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3027EE380 Computer Systems Colloquium: News Diffusion - fighting misinformationhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/ee380-computer-systems-colloquium-news-diffusion-fighting-misinformation
<p>Deepnews.ai wants to make a decisive contribution to the sustainability of the journalistic information ecosystem by addressing two problems: <br />1. The lack of correlation between the cost of producing great editorial content and its economic value. <br />2. The vast untapped potential for news editorial products.</p>
<p>Deepnews.ai willl have a simple and accessible scoring system: the online platform receives a batch of news stories will score on a scale of 1 to 5 based on their journalistic quality. This is done automatically and in real time. This scoring system has multiple applications.</p>
<p>On the business side, the greatest potential is the possibility to adjust the price of an advertisement to the quality of the editorial context. There is room for improvement. Today, a story that required months of work and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars carries the same unitary value (a few dollars per thousand page views) as a short, gossipy article. But times are changing. In the digital ad business, indicators are blinking red: CPMs, click-through rates, and viewability are on a steady downward decline. We believe that inevitably, advertisers and marketers will seek high-quality content--as long as they can rely on a credible indicator of quality. Deepnews.ai will interface with ad servers to assess the value of a story and price and serve ads accordingly. The higher a story's quality score, the pricier the ad space adjacent to it can be. This adjustment will substantially raise the revenue per page to match the quality of news.</p>
<p>On the editorial side: The ability to assess the quality of news will open up opportunities for new products and services such as: <br />• Recommendation engines improvement: instead of relying on keywords or frequency, Deepnews.ai will surface stories based on substantial quality, which will increase the number of articles read per visit. (Currently, visitors to many news sites read less than two articles per visit).<br /> • Personalization: We believe a reader's profile should not be limited to consumption analytics but should reflect his or her editorial preferences. Deepnews.ai is considering a dedicated "tag" which will be able to connect stories' metadata with a reader's affinity. <br />• Curation: Publishers will be able to use Deepnews.ai to offer curation services, a business currently left to players like Google and Apple. By providing technology that can automatically surface the best stories from trusted websites (even small ones), Deepnews.ai can help publishers expand their footprint.</p>
<p>The platform will be based on two of ML approaches: a feature-based model and a text content analytic model.</p>
<p>Using traditional ML methods, the first model assesses quality taking as input two sets of "signals" to assess the quality of journalistic work: Quantifiable Signals and Subjective Signals. Quantifiable Signals include the structure and patterns of the HTML page, advertising density, use of visual elements, bylines, word count, readability of the text, information density (number of quotes and named entities). This is processed data from news content. Subjective Signals are human scoring of quality based on criteria such as writing style, thoroughness, balance and fairness, timeliness, etc. These measures are produced by editors and experienced journalists.</p>
<p>The second approach is based on deep learning methods. Here, the goal is to build models that will be able to accurately classify an unseen incoming article purely based on the quality of the report, distinct from the metadata or the topic of discussion. The main challenge in many such deep learning approaches is the availability of labeled data. Nearly four million contemporary articles have been processed. They come from sources deemed as "good" or "commodity" (with no journalistic value-added). For the bulk of our data, the reputation and consistency of the news brand had a significant weight, but the objective is also to classify quality at a finer grained level, detached from the name of the source. To this end, various models are used to capture differences in writing that are agnostic to topical differences.</p>
2018-03-14 23:30:00Frédéric Filloux and Eun Seo Jo (Stanford)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3129Statistics Seminar: Inference, Computation, and Visualization for Convex Clustering and Biclusteringhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/statistics-seminar-inference-computation-and-visualization-convex-clustering-and
<p>Hierarchical clustering enjoys wide popularity because of its fast computation, ease of interpretation, and appealing visualizations via the dendogram and cluster heatmap. Recently, several have proposed and studied convex clustering and biclustering which, similar in spirit to hierarchical clustering, achieve cluster merges via convex fusion penalties. While these techniques enjoy superior statistical performance, they suffer from slower computation and are not generally conducive to representation as a dendogram. In the first part of the talk, we present new convex (bi)clustering methods and fast algorithms that inherit all of the advantages of hierarchical clustering. Specifically, we develop a new fast approximation and variation of the convex (bi)clustering solution path that can be represented as a dendogram or cluster heatmap. Also, as one tuning parameter indexes the sequence of convex (bi)clustering solutions, we can use these to develop interactive and dynamic visualization strategies that allow one to watch data form groups as the tuning parameter varies. In the second part of this talk, we consider how to conduct inference for convex clustering solutions that addresses questions like: Are there clusters in my data set? Or, should two clusters be merged into one? To achieve this, we develop a new geometric representation of Hotelling's T<sup>2</sup>-test that allows us to use the selective inference paradigm to test multivariate hypotheses for the first time. We can use this approach to test hypotheses and calculate confidence ellipsoids on the cluster means resulting from convex clustering. We apply these techniques to examples from text mining and cancer genomics.</p>
<p>This is joint work with John Nagorski and Frederick Campbell.</p>
<hr /><p>The Statistics Seminars for Winter Quarter will be held in Room 380Y of the Sloan Mathematics Center in the Main Quad at 4:30pm on Tuesdays. </p>
2018-03-13 23:30:00Genevera Allen (Rice University)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3073Applied Physics/Physics Colloquium: The Search for Dark Energy and NASA’s WFIRST missionhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/applied-physicsphysics-colloquium-search-dark-energy-and-nasa%25E2%2580%2599s-wfirst-mission
<p>Over the last twenty years, there has been growing evidence that our universe is dominated by dark energy. The nature of this dark energy remains a mystery. Is it the signature of the breakdown of general relativity or vacuum energy associated with quantum gravity? I will review the current observations and note the intriguing tensions between measurements based on the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and local measurements of the expansion rate of the universe and the amplitude of density fluctuations. I will then discuss on-going and upcoming CMB experiments and the role of the WFIRST mission in studying the nature of dark energy. I will also discuss the broader scientific mission of the WFIRST mission and its current status.</p>
2018-03-13 23:30:00David Spergel (Princeton University)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3130Rabbit Hole VR Club Hangouthttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/rabbit-hole-vr-club-hangout-1
<p><span>We invite you to play with our hardware and come get to know the core members and other club members. We can offer advice or just explore VR together!</span></p>
2018-03-12 00:00:00 to 2018-03-12 01:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3116MATSCI 230: Materials Science Colloquium presents Yury Gogotsihttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/matsci-230-materials-science-colloquium-presents-yury-gogotsi
<p>TBA</p>
2018-03-09 23:00:00Yury Gogotsihttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/3051SystemX Seminar: Hardware architectures for computational imaging and visionhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/systemx-seminar-hardware-architectures-computational-imaging-and-vision
<p>85% of images today are taken by cell phones. These images are not merely projections of light from the scene onto the camera sensor but result from a deep calculation. This calculation involves a number of computational imaging algorithms such as high dynamic range (HDR) imaging, panorama stitching, image deblurring and low-light imaging that compensate for camera limitations, and a number of deep learning based vision algorithms such as face recognition, object recognition and scene understanding that make inference on these images for a variety of emerging applications. However, because of their high computational complexity, mobile CPU or GPU based implementations of these algorithms do not achieve real-time performance. Moreover, offloading these algorithms to the cloud is not a viable solution because wirelessly transmitting large amounts of image data results in long latency and high energy consumption, making them unsuitable for mobile devices.</p>
<p>My approach to solving this problem has to been to design energy-efficient hardware accelerators targeted at these applications. In this talk, I will present my work on the architecture design and implementation of three complete computational imaging systems for energy-constrained mobile environments: (1) an energy-scalable accelerator for blind image deblurring, (2) a reconfigurable bilateral filtering processor for computational photography applications such as HDR imaging, low-light imaging and glare reduction, and (3) a low-power processor for real-time motion magnification in videos. Each of these accelerator-based systems achieves 2 to 3 orders of magnitude improvement in runtime and 3 to 4 orders of magnitude improvement in energy compared to existing implementations on CPU or GPU platforms. In my talk, I will present the energy minimization techniques that I employed in my designs to obtain these improvements. In addition, I will talk about how these systems achieve energy scalability by trading off accuracy with execution time. This is essential in real-life applications where one might still want to run a complex algorithm in a low-battery scenario but might be willing to sacrifice some visual quality.</p>
<p>I will conclude my talk by giving my vision for how such accelerator-based systems will enable energy-efficient integration of computational imaging and deep learning based vision algorithms into mobile and wearable devices for emerging applications such as autonomous driving, micro-robotics, assistive technology, medical imaging and augmented and virtual reality.</p>
2018-03-09 00:30:00Priyanka Raina (Visiting Research Scientist, Nvidia; Stanford EE)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2979E 311A: Women&#039;s Perspectives in Engineering presents Margot Gerritsenhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/e-311a-womens-perspectives-engineering-presents-margot-gerritsen
<p> </p>
<hr /><p>The ME Graduate Women's Group has offered ME/ENGR 311A: Women's Perspectives, a 1-unit credit seminar, every year since the group's inception in 1998. For credit or not, everyone is welcome to come! Speakers are asked to address the factors, experiences, and lessons that have been particularly important to their success in industry, academia, and... life.</p>
2018-03-09 00:30:00Margot Gerritsen, ICME Director; Senior Associate Dean for Educational Initiatives (Stanford)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3044Theory Seminar presents Kunal Talwarhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/theory-seminar-presents-kunal-talwar
<hr /><p><em>Stanford Theory Seminar (formerly known as Stanford Algorithms Seminar/AFLB) is usually held in Gates 498 or Theory Lounge(Gates 463A).</em><br /><strong>Faculty Contact: <a href="https://sites.google.com/site/marywootters/" target="_blank">Mary Wootters</a></strong><br />Student Contact: Shashwat Silas</p>
2018-03-09 00:15:00Kunal Talwarhttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/3058EE380 Computer Systems Colloquium: Computational Memory - A stepping-stone to non-von Neumann computing?https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/ee380-computer-systems-colloquium-computational-memory-stepping-stone-non-von-neumann
<p>In the advent of the data-centric AI era and the imminent end of CMOS scaling laws, the time is ripe to adopt computing units based on non-von Neumann computing architectures. A first step in this direction could be in-memory computing, where certain computational tasks are performed in place in a specialized memory unit called computational memory. Resistive memory devices, where information is represented in terms of atomic arrangements within tiny volumes of material, are poised to play a key role as elements of such computational memory units. I will present a few examples of how the physical attributes and dynamics of these devices can be exploited to achieve in-place computation. We expect that this co-existence of computation and storage at the nanometer scale could enable ultra-dense, low-power, and massively-parallel computing systems.</p>
<hr /><p>The Stanford EE Computer Systems Colloquium (EE380) meets on Wednesdays 4:30-5:45 throughout the academic year. Talks are given before a live audience in Room B03 in the basement of the Gates Computer Science Building on the Stanford Campus. The live talks (and the videos hosted at Stanford and on YouTube) are open to the public.</p>
2018-03-08 00:30:00Abu Sebastian (IBM Research Zürich)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3022SCIEN Talk: Temporal coding of volumetric imageryhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/scien-talk-temporal-coding-volumetric-imagery
<p>'Image volumes' refer to realizations of images in other dimensions such as time, spectrum, and focus. Recent advances in scientific, medical, and consumer applications demand improvements in image volume capture. Though image volume acquisition continues to advance, it maintains the same sampling mechanisms that have been used for decades; every voxel must be scanned or captured in parallel and is presumed independent of its neighbors. Under these conditions, improving performance comes at the cost of increased system complexity, data rates, and power consumption.</p>
<p>This talk describes systems and methods with which to efficiently detect and visualize image volumes by temporally encoding the extra dimensions' information into 2D measurements or displays. Some highlights of my research include video and 3D recovery from photographs, and true-3D augmented reality image display by time multiplexing. In the talk, I show how temporal optical coding can improve system performance, battery life, and hardware simplicity for a variety of platforms and applications.</p>
2018-03-08 00:30:00Dr. Patrick Llull (Google)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3026Applied Physics/Physics Colloquium: The Entropic Matter(s) of an Ordered Universehttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/applied-physicsphysics-colloquium-entropic-matters-ordered-universe
<p>Cosmic Information Theory and Analysis, CITA@CITA, uses entropy constrained by control/order parameters to relate our increasingly highly-entangled Cosmic Microwave Background and Large Scale Clustering big-sky data to how our Universe morphed from a coherently smooth accelerating Hubble-patch into the intricate evolving complexity of the cosmic web. I will chat about ongoing problems in (non-equilibrium) Information-Entropy generation: in post-inflation shock-in-time heating, stored now mostly in the cosmic photon and neutrino seas; in the space-shocked web of galaxies and clusters and its accompanying nuclear/black hole cosmic infrared waste. Central to our statistical analyses are the all-sky deep-volume ensembles of "webskys" we build to mock the real-sky webskys we observe. As in particle physics, simulating and discovering what lies Beyond the Standard Model of Cosmology is the goal, as yet with no B in the SMc in spite of tantalizing 2sigma-ish SMc anomalies and tensions.</p>
2018-03-08 00:30:00J. Richard Bond (Hanna Visiting Scholar CITA, University of Toronto)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3126Statistics Seminar presents Daniela Wittenhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/statistics-seminar-presents-daniela-witten
<p>TBA</p>
<hr /><p>The Statistics Seminars for Winter Quarter will be held in Room 380Y of the Sloan Mathematics Center in the Main Quad at 4:30pm on Tuesdays. </p>
2018-03-07 00:30:00Daniela Witten (University of Washington)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3072ISL Special Seminar: Low- and high-dimensional computations in neural circuitshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/isl-special-seminar-low-and-high-dimensional-computations-neural-circuits
<p>Computation in the brain is distributed across large populations. Individual neurons are noisy and receive limited information but, by acting collectively, neural populations perform a wide variety of complex computations. In this talk I will discuss two approaches to understanding these collective computations. First, I will introduce a method to identify and decode unknown variables encoded in the activity of neural populations. While the number of neurons in a population may be large, if the population encodes a low-dimensional variable there will be low-dimensional structure in the collective activity, and the method aims to find and parameterize this low-dimensional structure. In the rodent head direction (HD) system, the method reveals a nonlinear ring manifold and allows encoded head direction and the tuning curves of single cells to be recovered with high accuracy and without prior knowledge of what neurons were encoding. When applied to sleep, it provides mechanistic insight into the circuit construction of the ring manifold and, during nREM sleep, reveals a new dynamical regime possibly linked to memory consolidation in the brain. I will then address the problem of understanding genuinely high-dimensional computations in the brain, where low-dimensional structure does not exist. Modern work studying distributed algorithms on large sparse networks may provide a compelling approach to neural computation, and I will use insights from recent work on error correction to construct a novel architecture for high-capacity neural memory. Unlike previous models, which yield either weak (linear) increases in capacity with network size or exhibit poor robustness to noise, this network is able to store a number of states exponential in network size while preserving noise robustness, thus resolving a long-standing theoretical question.<br />These results demonstrate new approaches for studying neural representations and computation across a variety of scales, both when low-dimensional structure is present and when computations are high-dimensional.</p>
2018-03-06 18:00:00Rishidev Chaudhuri (Department of Neuroscience, University of Texas)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3127The Inaugural John G. Linvill Distinguished Seminar on Electronic Systems Technologyhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/inaugural-john-g-linvill-distinguished-seminar-electronic-systems-technology
<p>Featured speaker <strong>John L. Hennessy</strong> presents "The End of the Road for General Purpose Processors &amp; the Future of Computing" - <strong>Abstract:</strong> After 40 years of remarkable progress in VLSI microprocessors, a variety of factors are combining to lead to a much slower rate of performance growth in the future. These limitations arise from three different areas: IC technology, architectural limitations, and changing applications and usage. The end of Dennard scaling and the slowdown in Moore's Law will require more efficient architectural approaches than we have relied on to date. Although progress on general-purpose processors may hit an asymptote, domain specific architectures may be one attractive path for important classes of problems.</p>
<hr /><p><strong>About the John G. Linvill Distinguished Seminar on Electronic Systems Technology:</strong><br /><strong>John Linvill</strong> was a revered figure at Stanford as much for his self-effacing and unpretentious style as for his engineering foresight and his commitment to the entrepreneurial spirit. Linvill helped launch Stanford on a trajectory that would ensure Stanford's continuing leadership in electronics engineering for decades to come. These lectures have been created to help us explore our paths going forward, and to honor John Linvill's enormous legacy as both a faculty member and a department chairman, whose commitment to excellence at Stanford continues to be a model for us all. <strong><a href="https://systemx.stanford.edu/about/history" target="_blank">Read more about John Linvill</a></strong></p>
2018-03-06 00:00:00John L. Hennessy (Stanford)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3090Rabbit Hole VR Club Hangouthttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/rabbit-hole-vr-club-hangout-0
<p><span>We invite you to play with our hardware and come get to know the core members and other club members. We can offer advice or just explore VR together!</span></p>
2018-03-05 01:00:00 to 2018-03-05 02:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3115Networking Seminar presents Israel Cidonhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/networking-seminar-presents-israel-cidon
<hr /><p>Stanford's NetSeminar is a biweekly seminar covering networking-related topics. Speakers come from academia and industry and the talks are open to the public. When possible, talks will be recorded and posted online. We typically start at 12:15pm at Gates Bld — Room 104, unless otherwise mentioned.</p>
<p>NetSeminar is run by graduate students, and it is generously supported by the Stanford Computer Forum.</p>
2018-03-02 23:30:00Israel Cidon (VMware)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3064MATSCI 230: Materials Science Colloquium presents Maiken Mikkelsenhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/matsci-230-materials-science-colloquium-presents-maiken-mikkelsen
<p>TBA</p>
2018-03-02 23:00:00Maiken Mikkelsen (Duke)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3050E 311A: Women&#039;s Perspectives in Engineering presents Wendy Guhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/e-311a-womens-perspectives-engineering-presents-wendy-gu
<p> </p>
<hr /><p>The ME Graduate Women's Group has offered ME/ENGR 311A: Women's Perspectives, a 1-unit credit seminar, every year since the group's inception in 1998. For credit or not, everyone is welcome to come! Speakers are asked to address the factors, experiences, and lessons that have been particularly important to their success in industry, academia, and... life.</p>
2018-03-02 00:30:00Xun Wendy Gu, Asst. Professor of Mechanical Engineering (Stanford)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3043Theory Seminar presents Alistair Stewarthttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/theory-seminar-presents-alistair-stewart
<hr /><p><em>Stanford Theory Seminar (formerly known as Stanford Algorithms Seminar/AFLB) is usually held in Gates 498 or Theory Lounge(Gates 463A).</em><br /><strong>Faculty Contact: <a href="https://sites.google.com/site/marywootters/" target="_blank">Mary Wootters</a></strong><br />Student Contact: Shashwat Silas</p>
2018-03-02 00:15:00Alistair Stewarthttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/3057SmartGrid Seminar: Johanna Mathieuhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/smartgrid-seminar-johanna-mathieu
<p>The speakers are renowned scholars or industry experts in power and energy systems. We believe they will bring novel insights and fruitful discussions to Stanford. This seminar is offered as a 1 unit seminar course, CEE 272T/EE292T. Interested students can take this seminar course for credit by completing a project based on the topics presented in this course.</p>
2018-03-01 21:30:00Johanna Mathieu (University of Michigan)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3000IEEE IT Society, Santa Clara Valley presents From Differential Privacy to Generative Adversarial Privacy https://ee.stanford.edu/event/general/ieee-it-society-santa-clara-valley-presents-differential-privacy-generative
<p><strong>6:00PM</strong> Refreshments and Conversation</p>
<p><strong>6:30PM</strong> The explosive growth in connectivity and data collection is accelerating the use of machine learning to guide consumers through a myriad of choices and decisions. While this vision is expected to generate many disruptive businesses and social opportunities, it presents one of the biggest threats to privacy in recent history. In response to this threat, differential privacy (DP) has recently surfaced as a context-free, robust, and mathematically rigorous notion of privacy.<br />The first part of my talk will focus on understanding the fundamental tradeoff between DP and utility for a variety of unsupervised learning applications. Surprisingly, our results show the universal optimality of a family of extremal privacy mechanisms called staircase mechanisms. While the vast majority of works on DP have focused on using the Laplace mechanism, our results indicate that it is strictly suboptimal and can be replaced by a staircase mechanism to improve utility. Our results also show that the strong privacy guarantees of DP often come at a significant loss in utility.<br />The second part of my talk is motivated by the following question: can we exploit data statistics to achieve a better privacy-utility tradeoff? To address this question, I will present a novel context-aware notion of privacy called generative adversarial privacy (GAP). GAP leverages recent advancements in generative adversarial networks (GANs) to arrive to a unified framework for data-driven privacy that has deep game-theoretic and information-theoretic roots. I will conclude my talk by showcasing the performance of GAP on real life datasets.</p>
2018-03-01 02:00:00Peter Kairouz (Stanford)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3105SCIEN Talk: ChromaBlur: Rendering Chromatic Eye Aberration Improves Accommodation and Realismhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/scien-talk-chromablur-rendering-chromatic-eye-aberration-improves-accommodation-and
<p>Computer-graphics engineers and vision scientists want to generate images that reproduce realistic depth-dependent blur. Current rendering algorithms take into account scene geometry, aperture size, and focal distance, and they produce photorealistic imagery as with a high-quality camera. But to create immersive experiences, rendering algorithms should aim instead for perceptual realism. In so doing, they should take into account the signiﬁcant optical aberrations of the human eye. We developed a method that, by incorporating some of those aberrations, yields displayed images that produce retinal images much closer to the ones that occur in natural viewing. In particular, we create displayed images taking the eye's chromatic aberration into account. This produces different chromatic effects in the retinal image for objects farther or nearer than current focus. We call the method ChromaBlur. We conducted two experiments that illustrate the beneﬁts of ChromaBlur. One showed that accommodation (eye focusing) is driven quite effectively when ChromaBlur is used and that accommodation is not driven at all when conventional methods are used. The second showed that perceived depth and realism are greater with imagery created by ChromaBlur than in imagery created conventionally. ChromaBlur can be coupled with focus-adjustable lenses and gaze tracking to reproduce the natural relationship between accommodation and blur in HMDs and other immersive devices. It can thereby minimize the adverse effects of vergence-accommodation conﬂicts.</p>
2018-03-01 00:30:00Marty Banks (UC Berkeley)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3025EE380 Computer Systems Colloquium: The Evolution of Public Key Cryptographyhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/ee380-computer-systems-colloquium-evolution-public-key-cryptography
<p>While public key cryptography is seen as revolutionary, after this talk you might wonder why it took Whit Diffie, Ralph Merkle and Hellman so long to discover it. This talk also highlights the contributions of some unsung (or "under-sung") heroes: Ralph Merkle, John Gill, Stephen Pohlig, Richard Schroeppel, Loren Kohnfelder, and researchers at GCHQ (Ellis, Cocks, and Williamson).</p>
2018-03-01 00:30:00Martin E. Hellman Stanford University (EE Emeritus)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3117VR/AR Community presents Storytelling in 360 Videohttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/vrar-community-presents-storytelling-360-video
<p>Join us as we make a 360 video story from start to finish incorporating improv techniques. We will script it, film it, and produce it all in one event. It's going to be a blast!</p>
<p>The workshop will be lead by Hope Schroeder and Sam Duffy. Hope, a Rabbit Hole core member, worked on her interactive VR documentary for the summer of 2017. Sam, a Rabbit Hole member, is leading a 360 video project with RHVR this year and teaches an intro to VR class at Stanford.</p>
<p>Details through the link below.</p>
2018-02-28 01:30:00Hope Schroeder and Sam Duffyhttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/3037Statistics Seminar presents Jelena Bradichttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/statistics-seminar-presents-jelena-bradic
<p>TBA</p>
<hr /><p>The Statistics Seminars for Winter Quarter will be held in Room 380Y of the Sloan Mathematics Center in the Main Quad at 4:30pm on Tuesdays. </p>
2018-02-28 00:30:00Jelena Bradic (UC San Diego)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3071Applied Physics/Physics Colloquium: Topological Quantum Chemistryhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/applied-physicsphysics-colloquium-topological-quantum-chemistry
<p>The past decade has seen tremendous success in predicting and experimentally discovering distinct classes of topological insulators (TIs) and semimetals. We review the field and we propose an electronic band theory that highlights the link between topology and local chemical bonding, and combines this with the conventional band theory of electrons. Topological Quantum Chemistry is a description of the universal global properties of all possible band structures and materials, comprised of a graph theoretical description of momentum space and a dual group theoretical description in real space. We classify the possible band structures for all 230 crystal symmetry groups that arise from local atomic orbitals, and show which are topologically nontrivial. We show how our topological band theory sheds new light on known TIs, and demonstrate the power of our method to predict a plethora of new TIs.</p>
2018-02-28 00:15:00Andrei Bernevig (Princeton University)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3110Rabbit Hole VR Club Hangouthttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/rabbit-hole-vr-club-hangout
<p>We invite you to play with our hardware and come get to know the core members and other club members. We can offer advice or just explore VR together!</p>
2018-02-26 01:00:00 to 2018-02-26 02:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3114MATSCI 230: Materials Science Colloquium presents Darrell Irvinehttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/matsci-230-materials-science-colloquium-presents-darrell-irvine
<p>TBA</p>
2018-02-23 23:00:00Darrell Irvine (MIT)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3049IT-Forum: Restricted Isometry Property of Random Projection for Low-Dimensional Subspaceshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/it-forum-restricted-isometry-property-random-projection-low-dimensional-subspaces
<p>Dimensionality reduction is in demand to reduce the complexity of solving large-scale problems with data lying in latent low-dimensional structures in machine learning and computer version. Motivated by such need, in this talk I will introduce the Restricted Isometry Property (RIP) of Gaussian random projections for low-dimensional subspaces in R^N, and prove that the projection Frobenius norm distance between any two subspaces spanned by the projected data in R^n for n smaller than N remain almost the same as the distance between the original subspaces with probability no less than 1 - e^O(-n).</p>
<p>Previously the well-known Johnson-Lindenstrauss (JL) Lemma and RIP for sparse vectors have been the foundation of sparse signal processing including Compressed Sensing. As an analogy to JL Lemma and RIP for sparse vectors, this work allows the use of random projections to reduce the ambient dimension with the theoretical guarantee that the distance between subspaces after compression is well preserved.</p>
<p>As a direct result of our theory, when solving the subspace clustering (SC) problem at a large scale, one may conduct SC algorithm on randomly compressed samples to alleviate the high computational burden and still have theoretical performance guarantee. Because the distance between subspaces almost remains unchanged after projection, the clustering error rate of any SC algorithm may keep as small as that conducting in the original space. Considering that our theory is independent of SC algorithms, this may benefit future studies on other subspace related topics.</p>
<hr /><p> </p>
<p>The Information Theory Forum (IT-Forum) at Stanford ISL is an interdisciplinary academic forum which focuses on mathematical aspects of information processing. With a primary emphasis on information theory, we also welcome researchers from signal processing, learning and statistical inference, control and optimization to deliver talks at our forum. We also warmly welcome industrial affiliates in the above fields. The forum is typically held in Packard 202 every Friday at 1:15 pm during the academic year.</p>
<p>The Information Theory Forum is organized by graduate students Jiantao Jiao and Yanjun Han. To suggest speakers, please contact any of the students.</p>
2018-02-23 21:15:00Yuantao Gu (Tsinghua)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3012SystemX Seminar: Beyond inspiration: Three lessons from biology on building intelligent machineshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/systemx-seminar-beyond-inspiration-three-lessons-biology-building-intelligent-machines
<p>The only known systems that exhibit truly intelligent, autonomous behavior are biological. If we wish to build machines capable of such behavior, then it makes sense to learn as much as we can about how these systems work. Inspiration is a good start, but real progress will require gaining a more solid understanding of the principles of information processing at work in nervous systems. Here I will focus on three areas of investigation that I believe will be especially fruitful: 1) the study of perception-action loops, in particular how sensory information is actively acquired via motor commands, 2) developing good computational models of nonlinear signal integration in dendritic trees, and 3) elucidating the computational role of feedback in neural systems.</p>
2018-02-23 00:30:00Prof. Bruno Olshausen (UC Berkeley)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2978E 311A: Women&#039;s Perspectives in Engineering presents Anna Shedletskyhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/e-311a-womens-perspectives-engineering-presents-anna-shedletsky
<p> </p>
<hr /><p>The ME Graduate Women's Group has offered ME/ENGR 311A: Women's Perspectives, a 1-unit credit seminar, every year since the group's inception in 1998. For credit or not, everyone is welcome to come! Speakers are asked to address the factors, experiences, and lessons that have been particularly important to their success in industry, academia, and... life.</p>
2018-02-23 00:30:00Anna Shedletsky (CEO &amp; Co-founder of Instrumental, Inc.)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3042Theory Seminar presents Tom Gurhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/theory-seminar-presents-tom-gur
<hr /><p><em>Stanford Theory Seminar (formerly known as Stanford Algorithms Seminar/AFLB) is usually held in Gates 498 or Theory Lounge(Gates 463A).</em><br /><strong>Faculty Contact: <a href="https://sites.google.com/site/marywootters/" target="_blank">Mary Wootters</a></strong><br />Student Contact: Shashwat Silas</p>
2018-02-23 00:15:00Tom Gurhttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/3056ISL Colloquium: Deep Exploration via Randomized Value Functionshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/isl-colloquium-deep-exploration-randomized-value-functions
<p>An important challenge in reinforcement learning concerns how an agent can simultaneously explore and generalize in a reliably efficient manner. It is difficult to claim that one can produce a robust artificial intelligence without tackling this fundamental issue. This talk will present a systematic approach to exploration that induces judicious probing through randomization of value function estimates and operates effectively in tandem with common reinforcement learning algorithms, such as least-squares value iteration and temporal-difference learning, that generalize via parameterized representations of the value function. Theoretical results offer assurances with tabular representations of the value function, and computational results suggest that the approach remains effective with generalizing representations.</p>
2018-02-23 00:15:00Prof. Benjamin Van Roy (Stanford)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3104SmartGrid Seminar: Optimizing the Operation and Deployment of Battery Energy Storagehttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/smartgrid-seminar-optimizing-operation-and-deployment-battery-energy-storage
<p>While the cost of battery energy storage systems is decreasing, justifying their deployment beyond pilot or subsidized projects remains challenging. In this talk, we will discuss how to optimize the size and location of batteries used for spatio-temporal arbitrage by either vertically-integrated utilities or merchant storage developers. We will also consider other applications of battery energy storage, such as reserve and frequency regulation and how battery degradation can be taken into account in optimal dispatch decisions.</p>
<hr /><p> </p>
<p>The speakers are renowned scholars or industry experts in power and energy systems. We believe they will bring novel insights and fruitful discussions to Stanford. This seminar is offered as a 1 unit seminar course, CEE 272T/EE292T. Interested students can take this seminar course for credit by completing a project based on the topics presented in this course.</p>
2018-02-22 21:30:00Daniel Kirschen (University of Washington)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2999SCIEN Talk: Data-driven Computational Imaginghttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/scien-talk-data-driven-computational-imaging
<p>Between ever increasing pixel counts, ever cheaper sensors, and the ever expanding world-wide-web, natural image data has become plentiful. These vast quantities of data, be they high frame rate videos or huge curated datasets like Imagenet, stand to substantially improve the performance and capabilities of computational imaging systems. However, using this data efficiently presents its own unique set of challenges. In this talk I will use data to develop better priors, improve reconstructions, and enable new capabilities for computational imaging systems.</p>
2018-02-22 00:30:00Chris Metzler (Rice University)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3024EE380 Computer Systems Colloquium: Graph Analysis of Russian Twitter Trolls using Neo4jhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/ee380-computer-systems-colloquium-graph-analysis-russian-twitter-trolls-using-neo4j
<p>As part of the US House Intelligence Committee investigation into how Russia may have influenced the 2016 US election, Twitter released the screen names of nearly 3000 Twitter accounts tied to Russia's Internet Research Agency. These accounts were immediately suspended, removing the data from Twitter.com and Twitter's developer API. In this talk, we show how we can reconstruct a subset of the Twitter network of these Russian troll accounts and apply graph analytics to the data using the Neo4j graph database to uncover how these accounts were spreading fake news.</p>
<p>This case study style presentation will show how we collected and munged the data, taking advantage of the flexibility of the property graph. We'll dive into how NLP and graph algorithms like PageRank and community detection can be applied in the context of social media to make sense of the data. We'll show how Cypher, the query language for graphs is used to work with graph data. And we'll show how visualization is used in combination with these algorithms to interpret results of the analysis and to help share the story of the data. No familiarity with graphs or Neo4j is necessary as we'll start with a brief overview of graph databases and Neo4j.</p>
2018-02-22 00:30:00William Lyon (Neo4j)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3103CERC Lecture Series: Mihaela van der Schaarhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/cerc-lecture-series-mihaela-van-der-schaar
<p><strong>CERC Lecture Series Guest:</strong><br />Mihaela van der Schaar, PhD<br />MAN Professor, University of Oxford<br />Faculty Fellow, Alan Turing Institute, London, UK</p>
<p><strong>HER LECTURE TOPIC: "AutoPrognosis: Automating the design of predictive models for clinical risk and prognosis"</strong></p>
2018-02-21 17:30:00Mihaela van der Schaar, PhD (MAN Professor, University of Oxford Faculty Fellow, Alan Turing Institute, London)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3093Applied Physics/Physics Colloquium: Sloppy models, Differential geometry, and How Science Workshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/applied-physicsphysics-colloquium-sloppy-models-differential-geometry-and-how-science
<p>Models of systems biology, climate change, ecosystems, and macroeconomics have parameters that are hard or impossible to measure directly. If we fit these unknown parameters, fiddling with them until they agree with past experiments, how much can we trust their predictions? We have found that predictions can be made despite huge uncertainties in the parameters – many parameter combinations are mostly unimportant to the collective behavior. We will use ideas and methods from differential geometry to explain what sloppiness is and why it happens so often. We show that physics theories are also sloppy – that sloppiness may be the underlying reason why the world is comprehensible.</p>
2018-02-21 00:30:00Prof. James Sethna (Cornell)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2994Statistics Seminar: A pliable lassohttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/statistics-seminar-pliable-lasso
<p>TBA</p>
<hr /><p>The Statistics Seminars for Winter Quarter will be held in Room 380Y of the Sloan Mathematics Center in the Main Quad at 4:30pm on Tuesdays. </p>
2018-02-21 00:30:00Rob Tibshirani (Stanford Statistics)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3070SystemX BONUS! Seminar: Soft Switching Inverters with Wide-Bandgap Deviceshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/systemx-bonus-seminar-soft-switching-inverters-wide-bandgap-devices
<p>Soft switching has been successfully applied in switching supplies, single-phase inverter for induction heating etc. However, applications of soft switching to three-phase inverters or converters are not so common up to now. Three-phase converters/inverters are widely used in Data Center, UPS, fast EV chargers, PV/Wind power inverter, and drives. In this presentation soft switching inverters with Zero-Voltage-Switching SVM scheme(ZVS-SVM) is introduced. The ZVS-SVM can be used either three-Phase AC/DC converters or inverters and realize zero voltage switching for all switches including both inverter bridges switches and the auxiliary switch for three-phase inverters. Then impact of SiC device on soft switching inverters is investigated with respect to the power density and conversion efficiency. Finally experimental results of a soft-switching 20 kW SiC MOSFET grid inverter with 300kHz switching frequency is introduced.</p>
2018-02-21 00:30:00Prof. Mark Dehong Xu (Zhejiang University China)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3095Presidents&#039; Dayhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/general/presidents-day
<p>2018, February 19 (Mon) Presidents' Day (holiday, no classes; Law does hold classes).</p>
2018-02-19 08:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2986lab64 Speaker Series: Nothing Half Way - Being Fearless With Your Projectshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/lab64-speaker-series-nothing-half-way-being-fearless-your-projects
<p>Quinn has been making games for 36 years, on platforms ranging from the Apple II to all manner of newfangled things. She currently manages engineering for mobile games at Scopely. She also pursues consulting, independent development, mixed-media engineering projects, and writing. In her spare time she welds things, races cars, hacks electronics, and berates her friends with sarcasm.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.quinndunki.com" target="_blank">www.quinndunki.com</a><br /><a href="http://www.quinndunki.com/blondihacks" target="_blank">www.quinndunki.com/blondihacks</a></p>
<p><em>Editorial comment: </em>Quinn decided that if Steve Wozniak could make a computer in a garage, she should be able to do that too. She then embarked on a journey to build a computer from scratch (PCBs and all) in her kitchen / garage. The result, which she calls Veronica, is a truly homemade programmable computer. You can find out more about all this on her web sites.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong><a href="https://goo.gl/forms/EjDJG0pgv7AVFGyi1" target="_blank">Please RSVP for Quinn's talk (and free food) by 2/13/16</a>.</strong></p>
2018-02-17 00:00:00Quinn Dunki (Scopely)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3091MATSCI 230: Materials Science Colloquium presents David Srolovitzhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/matsci-230-materials-science-colloquium-presents-david-srolovitz
<p><span>This talk addresses how grain boundaries (GBs) migrate under a range of different driving forces. Our approach is based on a description of the motion of crystallographic line defects in GB,; i.e., disconnections. First, I will review the relationship between disconnections and the underlying bicrystallography; this relationship determines the set of all allowed Burgers vector and step heights (geometric properties of disconnections) for each GB {b,h}. Next, I will show how GBs move under no driving force and for different driving forces. In particular, I will discuss GB roughening, intrinsic mobility, and why GB mobility depends on the nature of the driving force. These results will be compared with both atomistic simulation and experiment. Next, I apply this picture to understand the motion GBs in a bicrystal and derive a continuum equation of motion for GBs and then turn to the role of triple junctions (TJs) and show that it is remarkable that TJ move at all. I’ll end by discussing what it takes to move a GB, how the flexibility of GB dynamics make this possible and the consequences for GB migration in polycrystals. </span></p>
2018-02-16 23:00:00David Srolovitz (University of Pennsylvania)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3048SystemX Seminar: Nanoscale MOSFET Modeling for the Design of Low-power Analog and RF Circuitshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/systemx-seminar-nanoscale-mosfet-modeling-design-low-power-analog-and-rf-circuits
<p>The emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT) poses stringent requirements on the energy consumption and has hence become the primary driver for low-power analog and RF circuit design. Implementation of increasingly complex functions under highly constrained power and area budgets, while circumventing the challenges posed by modern device technologies, makes analog and RF circuit design ever more challenging. Some guidance would therefore be invaluable for the designer to navigate the multi-variable design space.</p>
<p>This talk presents low-power analog and RF design techniques that can be applied from device to circuit level. It starts with the presentation of the concept of inversion coefficient <em>IC</em> as an essential design parameter that spans the entire range of operating points from weak via moderate to strong inversion. Several figures-of-merit (FoM) including the <em>G<sub>m</sub>/I<sub>D</sub></em>, the <em>F<sub>t</sub></em> and their product <em>G<sub>m</sub><span> </span></em><span><span>‧ </span></span><em>F<sub>t</sub>/I<sub>D</sub></em>, capturing the various trade-offs encountered in analog and RF circuit design are presented. The simplicity of the <em>IC</em>-based models is emphasized and compared against measurements of 40- and 28-nm bulk CMOS processes and BSIM6 simulations. Finally, a simple technique to extract the basic model parameters from measurements or simulation is described before concluding.</p>
2018-02-16 00:30:00Prof. Christian Enz (EPFL)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2977E 311A: Women&#039;s Perspectives in Engineering presents Maryam Eskandarihttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/e-311a-womens-perspectives-engineering-presents-maryam-eskandari
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<hr /><p>The ME Graduate Women's Group has offered ME/ENGR 311A: Women's Perspectives, a 1-unit credit seminar, every year since the group's inception in 1998. For credit or not, everyone is welcome to come! Speakers are asked to address the factors, experiences, and lessons that have been particularly important to their success in industry, academia, and... life.</p>
2018-02-16 00:30:00Maryam Eskandari (MIIM Designs​)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3041ISL Colloquium: Data-driven analysis of neuronal activityhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/isl-colloquium-data-driven-analysis-neuronal-activity
<p>Recent advances in experimental methods in neuroscience enable the acquisition of large-scale, high-dimensional and high-resolution datasets. In this talk I will present new data-driven methods based on global and local spectral embeddings for the processing and organization of high-dimensional datasets, and demonstrate their application to neuronal measurements. Looking deeper into the spectrum, we develop Local Selective Spectral Clustering, a new method capable of handling overlapping clusters and disregarding clutter. Applied to in-vivo calcium imaging, we extract hundreds of neuronal structures with detailed morphology, and demixed and denoised time-traces. Next we introduce a nonliner model-free approach for the analysis of a dynamical system, developing data-driven tree-based transforms and metrics for multiscale co-organization of the data. Applied to trial-based neuronal measurements, we identify, solely from observations and in a purely unsupervised manner, functional subsets of neurons, activity patterns associated with particular behaviors and pathological dysfunction caused by external intervention.</p>
2018-02-16 00:15:00Gal Mishne (Yale)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3017Special Seminar: The quest towards high accuracy and absolute robustness in highly-digital CMOS analog sensor readout circuitshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/special-seminar-quest-towards-high-accuracy-and-absolute-robustness-highly-digital
<p>Distributed and networked sensors are increasingly important in the emerging era of the Internet of Things (IoT), as they are the gateway between the physical world and the ubiquitous electronics. This is the case in many modern-day applications ranging from smart cars to biomedical monitoring, environmental observations, energy control, etc.</p>
<p>Ultra-low power consumption in combination with the desired accuracy levels and absolute robustness are the main requirements for these sensors and their readout circuits. This can only be achieved by adopting innovative circuit architectures in combination with advanced technologies. This presentation will describe the state of the art of time-based sensor readout solutions, which have the benefit of small area and good technology scalability. An important requirement is the absolute robustness across temperature, etc. We will highlight the techniques used to accomplish this in time-based solutions.</p>
2018-02-16 00:00:00Prof. Georges Gielen (University of Leuven)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3089Networking Seminar presents Aurojit Pandahttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/networking-seminar-presents-aurojit-panda
<hr /><p>Stanford's NetSeminar is a biweekly seminar covering networking-related topics. Speakers come from academia and industry and the talks are open to the public. When possible, talks will be recorded and posted online. We typically start at 12:15pm at Gates Bld — Room 104, unless otherwise mentioned.</p>
<p>NetSeminar is run by graduate students, and it is generously supported by the Stanford Computer Forum.</p>
2018-02-15 20:15:00Aurojit Panda (NYU)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3063ISL Special Seminar: Computational structure in large-scale neural population recordings: how to find it, and when to believe ithttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/isl-special-seminar-computational-structure-large-scale-neural-population-recordings
<p>One central challenge in neuroscience is to understand how neural populations represent and produce the remarkable computational abilities of our brains. Indeed, neuroscientists increasingly form scientific hypotheses that can only be studied at the level of the neural population, and exciting new large-scale datasets have followed. Capitalizing on this trend, however, requires two major efforts from applied statistical and machine learning researchers: (i) methods for finding structure in this data, and (ii) methods for statistically validating that structure. First, I will review our work that has used factor modeling and dynamical systems to advance understanding of the computational structure in the motor cortex of primates and rodents. Second, while these methods and the broader class of such methods are promising, they are also perilous: novel analysis techniques do not always consider the possibility that their results are an expected consequence of some simpler, already-known feature of the data. I will present two works that address this growing problem, the first of which derives a tensor-variate maximum entropy distribution with user-specified moment constraints along each mode. This distribution forms the basis of a statistical hypothesis test, and I will use this test to answer two active debates in the neuroscience community over the triviality of structure in the motor and prefrontal cortices. I will then discuss how to extend this maximum entropy formulation to arbitrary constraints using deep neural network architectures in the flavor of implicit generative modeling.</p>
2018-02-15 18:00:00John Cunningham (Columbia University)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3096EE380 Computer Systems Colloquium: Stopping grinding attacks in proofs of spacehttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/ee380-computer-systems-colloquium-stopping-grinding-attacks-proofs-space
<p>The reduced power requirements of proofs of space, which is one of its core features, opens it up to grinding attacks, in which an attacker tries many different possible histories at once and selects the most advantageous one. I'll explain how through extensive use of canonical primitives, the addition of verifiable delay functions, and careful hooking of everything together, it's possible to get grinding attacks under control.</p>
<hr /><p>The Stanford EE Computer Systems Colloquium (EE380) meets on Wednesdays 4:30-5:45 throughout the academic year. Talks are given before a live audience in Room B03 in the basement of the Gates Computer Science Building on the Stanford Campus. The live talks (and the videos hosted at Stanford and on YouTube) are open to the public.</p>
2018-02-15 00:30:00Bram Cohen (Chia Network)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3021SCIEN Talk: Accelerated Computing for Light Field and Holographic Displayshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/scien-talk-accelerated-computing-light-field-and-holographic-displays
<p>In this talk, I will present two recently published papers at the annual SIGGRAPH ASIA 2017. For the first paper, we present a 4D light field sampling and rendering system for light field displays that can support both foveation and accommodation to reduce rendering cost while maintaining perceptual quality and comfort. For the second paper, we present a light field based Computer Generated Holography (CGH) rendering pipeline allowing for reproduction of high-definition 3D scenes with continuous depth and support of intra-pupil view dependent occlusion using computer generated hologram. Our rendering and Fresnel integral accurately accounts for diffraction and supports various types of reference illumination for holograms.</p>
2018-02-15 00:30:00Fu-Chung Huang (Nvidia)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3023KIPAC Public Lecture: The Universe Continues to Reveal Surpriseshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/general/kipac-public-lecture-universe-continues-reveal-surprises
<p>Over the past few decades, astronomers have for the first time identified the major constituents of the universe. Unexpectedly, the universe hardly resembles what we thought only a couple of decades ago. The universe is filled with dark matter more abundant than ordinary matter and dark energy that is causing a runaway acceleration. We do not yet have a complete picture of this unexpected universe. Some discrepancies may be hinting at new discoveries to come. New giant telescopes planned for the next decade are likely to reveal more surprises. In her lecture, Professor Freedman will describe these recent advances.</p>
2018-02-14 03:30:00Wendy Freedman (The University of Chicago)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3094Statistics Seminar presents Art Owenhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/statistics-seminar-presents-art-owen
<p>TBA</p>
<hr /><p>The Statistics Seminars for Winter Quarter will be held in Room 380Y of the Sloan Mathematics Center in the Main Quad at 4:30pm on Tuesdays. </p>
2018-02-14 00:30:00Art Owen (Stanford Statistics)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3069Applied Physics/Physics Colloquium: Magic Angle Graphene: A New Platform for Strongly Correlated Physicshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/applied-physicsphysics-colloquium-magic-angle-graphene-new-platform-strongly
<p>The understanding of strongly-correlated quantum matter has challenged physicists for decades. Such difficulties have stimulated new research paradigms, such as ultra-cold atom lattices for simulating quantum materials. In this talk I will present a new platform to investigate strongly correlated physics, based on graphene moiré superlattices. In particular, I will show that when two graphene sheets are twisted by an angle close to the theoretically predicted 'magic angle', the resulting flat band structure near the Dirac point gives rise to a strongly-correlated electronic system. These flat bands exhibit half-filling insulating phases at zero magnetic field, which we show to be a Mott-like insulator arising from electrons localized in the moiré superlattice. These unique properties of magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene open up a new playground for exotic many-body quantum phases in a 2D platform made of pure carbon and without magnetic field. The easy accessibility of the flat bands, the electrical tunability, and the bandwidth tunability though twist angle may pave the way towards more exotic correlated systems, such as quantum spin liquids. I will end my talk with an unconventional experimental surprise.</p>
2018-02-14 00:30:00Pablo Jarillo-Herrero (MIT)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3085OSA Seminar: From the Optics Lab to the Ear Clinic: Translating Photonic Techniques in Pediatric Ear Nose and Throathttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/osa-seminar-optics-lab-ear-clinic-translating-photonic-techniques-pediatric-ear-nose
<p>Visible light pneumatic otoscopy is considered the best currently available diagnostic office tool for otitis media and congenital cholesteatoma. The implementation of pneumatic otoscopy, however, by primary care physicians in their practice has not been optimal, leading to a lack of resident training and a perception that pneumatic otoscopy is difficult to master.</p>
<p>This has resulted in a diagnostic certainty for otitis media among primary care physicians around 55-70% however antibiotic prescriptions are still used in large number for this condition despite this level of uncertainty. Cholesteatoma is a benign but destructive middle ear condition only curative with surgery. More than one surgical procedure is often required due to the high recurrence rate of cholesteatoma. We will discuss various optical techniques focused in understanding middle ear conditions in an attempt to improve our ability to make the diagnosis.</p>
2018-02-14 00:15:00Dr. Tulio Valdez (Assoc. Prof of Otolaryngology (Pediatric) Packard Children’s Hospital)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3082SystemX Seminar: Advanced SAR ADCs – Efficiency, Accuracy, Calibration and Referenceshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/systemx-seminar-advanced-sar-adcs-%25E2%2580%2593-efficiency-accuracy-calibration-and-references
<p><span>This talk will discuss several recent techniques that were developed in the context of SAR ADCs. The presentation will show a few design examples with different performance targets. The first topic deals with minimizing power consumption while aiming to increase accuracy by means of linearization and noise reduction techniques. The second topic is about efficient calibration techniques for SAR ADCs. The last part describes a method to co-integrate the reference buffer with the SAR ADC.</span></p>
2018-02-10 00:00:00Prof. Pieter Harpe (Eindhoven University of Technology)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2976VR/AR Community presents Intro to Mobile ARhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/vrar-community-presents-intro-mobile-ar
<p>Come learn the basics of augmented reality development and storytelling from a Rabbit Hole core member who has worked in mobile AR. Details through the link below.</p>
2018-02-09 23:30:00Khoi Lehttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/3036MATSCI 230: Materials Science Colloquium presents Joan Redwinghttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/matsci-230-materials-science-colloquium-presents-joan-redwing
<p>The spectrum of two-dimensional (2D) materials "beyond graphene" has been continually expanding driven by the compelling properties of monolayer films compared to their bulk counterparts. Device applications, however, require the ability to deposit single crystal 2D films over large areas necessitating the use of epitaxy techniques to control film orientation. Our studies have primarily focused on the epitaxial growth of layered transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) films, including WSe2, WS2 and MoS2, by gas source chemical vapor deposition (CVD) on sapphire, hexagonal boron nitride and other single crystal substrates. Gas source CVD provides excellent control of the precursor partial pressure enabling control over nucleation density, lateral growth rate and film composition for the layer-by-layer growth of 2D films and heterostructures. Our studies are aimed at understanding the fundamental growth mechanisms of layered TMDs including the role of precursor chemistry, gas phase and surface diffusion and 2D crystal edge termination on monolayer growth. In addition to layered chalcogenide epitaxy, we are also investigating unconventional approaches to 2D materials synthesis including intercalation and chemical conversion within the van der Waals gap of epitaxial graphene formed on SiC. Using this approach, we recently demonstrated the formation of ultra-thin Ga2N3, a direct gap semiconductor with a bandgap energy in the range of 4.8-4.9 eV. Prospects for using graphene-encapsulated growth for the synthesis of other 2D materials will also be discussed.</p>
2018-02-09 23:00:00Joan Redwing, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, 2D Crystal Consortium (Pennsylvania State University)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/30472018 EE REU Mixerhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/2018-ee-reu-mixer
<p><strong>Planning what to do over the summer? Interested in AI, Deep Learning, and Machine Learning? Looking into VR/AR, Neuroscience, Medical Imaging, and Bioengineering? A die-hard fan of EE hot topics like Convex Optimization, Signal Processing, Electronics, and more?</strong></p>
<p>You're all set! Come to our EE ReU Mixer to meet professors and graduate researchers and learn about 30 projects open to you this summer.</p>
<p>The mixer is open to all undergraduates; freshmen and sophomores who are exploring their major/minor options are especially welcome.</p>
<p><a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSc3WS3rrqYUdsVgqeE6bj0BPJqk5tx4FNJNQIHsUl3befpmig/viewform" target="_blank"><strong>RSVP by Feb 7 (Wed)</strong></a>! </p>
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<p><em>This event is sponsored by</em> Stanford IEEE Chapter and FUSE – <a href="https://ee.stanford.edu/student-resources/student-organizations">EE Student Groups</a>.</p>
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2018-02-09 22:00:00 to 2018-02-10 00:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3080IT-Forum: BATS: Network Coding in Actionhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/it-forum-bats-network-coding-action
<p>Multi-hop wireless networks can be found in many application scenarios, including IoT, fog computing, satellite communication, underwater communication, etc. The main challenge in such networks is the accumulation of packet loss in the wireless links. With existing technologies, the throughput decreases exponentially fast with the number of hops.</p>
<p>In this talk, we introduce BATched Sparse code (BATS code) as a solution to this challenge. BATS code is a rateless implementation of network coding. The advantages of BATS codes include low encoding/decoding complexities, high throughput, low latency, and low storage requirement. This makes BATS codes ideal for implementation on IoT devices that have limited computing power and storage. At the end of the talk, we will show a video demonstration of BATS code over a Wi-Fi network with 10 IoT devices acting as relay nodes.</p>
<hr /><p> The Information Theory Forum (IT-Forum) at Stanford ISL is an interdisciplinary academic forum which focuses on mathematical aspects of information processing. With a primary emphasis on information theory, we also welcome researchers from signal processing, learning and statistical inference, control and optimization to deliver talks at our forum. We also warmly welcome industrial affiliates in the above fields. The forum is typically held in Packard 202 every Friday at 1:15 pm during the academic year.</p>
<p>The Information Theory Forum is organized by graduate students Jiantao Jiao and Yanjun Han. To suggest speakers, please contact any of the students.</p>
2018-02-09 21:15:00Raymond Yeung (CUHK)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3011SystemX Seminar: Mobile technology trends in 5G and beyondhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/systemx-seminar-mobile-technology-trends-5g-and-beyond
<p>The technology development and standardization of 5G radio access have been rapidly progressing. A major agreement was reached in the past few weeks, enabling industry to complete its product development, with early commercial network deployments expected in 2018. In addition to enhancing mobile broadband services, which have dominated 4G, 5G aims to enable critical machine type communications (cMTC) and support Internet of Things (IoT) using the same network. This ambition poses stringent design requirements and performance objectives in many different dimensions. For example, in addition to significant improvements in peak data rates and network capacity compared to existing cellular technologies, 5G performance objectives further include ultra-low latency and ultra-reliability for cMTC, and superior device energy efficiency, low device cost, ubiquitous coverage reaching devices deep indoors, and ultra-high device connection density for IoT. The three pillars of 5G technologies, enhanced MBB, cMTC, and IoT, extend 5G services vastly to many new use cases. In this talk, we first describe the principles adopted in 5G to achieve its performance objectives. We give an overview of upcoming early deployments, which address MBB primarily. We also give examples of how 5G enables smart city and connected industry. Finally, we discuss the next steps in 5G and what may come beyond 5G.</p>
2018-02-09 00:30:00Ali Kharallah (Ericsson Research)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2975E 311A: Women&#039;s Perspectives in Engineering presents Srinija Srinivasanhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/e-311a-womens-perspectives-engineering-presents-srinija-srinivasan
<p> </p>
<hr /><p>The ME Graduate Women's Group has offered ME/ENGR 311A: Women's Perspectives, a 1-unit credit seminar, every year since the group's inception in 1998. For credit or not, everyone is welcome to come! Speakers are asked to address the factors, experiences, and lessons that have been particularly important to their success in industry, academia, and... life.</p>
2018-02-09 00:30:00Srinija Srinivasan (Stanford University Board of Trustees)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3040ISL Colloquium: Dynamical Systems on Weighted Lattices: Nonlinear Processing and Optimizationhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/isl-colloquium-dynamical-systems-weighted-lattices-nonlinear-processing-and
<p>In this talk we will present a unifying theoretical framework of nonlinear processing operators and dynamical systems that obey a superposition of a weighted max-* or min-* type and evolve on nonlinear spaces which we call complete weighted lattices. Their algebraic structure has a polygonal geometry. Some of the special cases unified include max-plus, max-product, and probabilistic dynamical systems. Such systems have found applications in diverse fields including nonlinear image analysis and vision scale- spaces, control of discrete-event dynamical systems, dynamic programming (e.g. shortest paths, Viterbi algorithm), inference on graphical models, tracking salient events in multimodal information streams using generalized Markov chains, and sparse modeling. Our theoretical approach establishes their representation in state and input-output spaces using monotone lattice operators, finds analytically their state and output responses using nonlinear convolutions of a weighted max-min type, studies their stability and reachability, and provides optimal solutions to solving max-* matrix equations. The talk will summarize the main concepts and our theoretical results in this broad field using weighted lattice algebra and will sample some application areas.</p>
2018-02-09 00:15:00Prof. Petros Maragos (National Technical University of Athens)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3016Theory Seminar presents Nima Anarihttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/theory-seminar-presents-nima-anari
<hr /><p><em>Stanford Theory Seminar (formerly known as Stanford Algorithms Seminar/AFLB) is usually held in Gates 498 or Theory Lounge(Gates 463A).</em><br /><strong>Faculty Contact: <a href="https://sites.google.com/site/marywootters/" target="_blank">Mary Wootters</a></strong><br />Student Contact: Shashwat Silas</p>
2018-02-09 00:15:00Nima Anarihttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/3055SmartGrid Seminar: From Sensors to Software: The role of Wireless in the Smart Gridhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/smartgrid-seminar-sensors-software-role-wireless-smart-grid
<p>Sensor-enabled embedded systems are redefining how future communities sense, reason about and manage utilities (water, electric, gas, sewage), roads, traffic lights, bridges, parking complexes, agriculture, waterways and the broader environment. With advances in low-power wide area networks (LP-WANs), we are seeing radios able to transmit small payloads at low data rates (a few kilobits per second) over long distances (several kilometers) with minimal power consumption. As such, LP-WANs have become both a target of study as well as an enabler for a variety of research projects. In this talk, I will describe our experiences in developing and deploying wireless sensing systems for energy-efficient building and smart-grid applications. I will start-off by discussing a number of hardware platforms and sensing techniques developed to improve visibility into buildings and their occupants. This includes new devices for occupancy estimation, demand-side management using electric water heaters and an assortment of low-cost and easy-to-install sub-metering devices. I then show how these devices can be easily integrated using an open-source platform called OpenChirp that provides data context, storage and visualization for sensing systems. Finally, I will go over a case-study where we electrified over 500 homes in rural Haiti with wireless smart-meters that now no longer require expensive and toxic kerosene for lighting.</p>
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<p>The speakers are renowned scholars or industry experts in power and energy systems. We believe they will bring novel insights and fruitful discussions to Stanford. This seminar is offered as a 1 unit seminar course, CEE 272T/EE292T. Interested students can take this seminar course for credit by completing a project based on the topics presented in this course.</p>
2018-02-08 21:30:00Anthony Rowe (Carnegie Mellon)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2998SCIEN Talk: Street View 2018 - The Newest Generation of Mapping Hardwarehttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/scien-talk-street-view-2018-newest-generation-mapping-hardware
<p>A brief overview of Street View from it's inception 10 years ago until now will be presented. Street level Imagery has been the prime objective for Google's Street View in the past, and has now migrated into a state-of-the-art mapping platform. Challenges and solutions to the design and fabrication of the imaging system and optimization of hardware to align with specific software post processing will be discussed. Real world challenges of fielding hardware in 80+ countries will also be addressed.</p>
2018-02-08 00:30:00Dr. Steve Silverman (Google)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2984EE380 Computer Systems Colloquium: Tiny functions for codecs, compilation, and (maybe) soon everythinghttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/ee380-computer-systems-colloquium-tiny-functions-codecs-compilation-and-maybe-soon
<p>Networks, applications, and media codecs frequently treat one another as strangers. By expressing large systems as compositions of small, pure functions, we've found it's possible to achieve tighter couplings between these components, improving performance without giving up modularity or the ability to debug. I'll discuss our experience with systems that demonstrate this basic idea: ExCamera (NSDI 2017) parallelizes video encoding into thousands of tiny tasks, each handling a fraction of a second of video, much shorter than the interval between key frames, and executing in parallel on AWS Lambda. This was the first system to demonstrate "burst-parallel" thousands-way computation on functions-as-a-service infrastructure. Salsify (NSDI 2018) is a low-latency network video system that uses a purely functional video codec to explore execution paths of the encoder without committing to them, allowing it to closely match the capacity estimates from a video-aware transport protocol. This architecture outperforms more loosely-coupled applications -- Skype, Facetime, Hangouts, WebRTC -- in delay and visual quality, and suggests that while improvements in video codecs may have reached the point of diminishing returns, video systems still have low-hanging fruit. Lepton (NSDI 2017) uses a purely functional JPEG/VP8 transcoder to compress images in parallel across a distributed network filesystem with arbitrary block boundaries. This free-software system is in production at Dropbox and has compressed, by 23%, more than 200 petabytes of user JPEGs.</p>
<p>Based on our experience, we propose a general abstraction for outsourced morsels of computation, called cloud "thunks" -- stateless closures that describe their data dependencies by content-hash. We have created a tool that uses this abstraction to capture off-the-shelf Makefiles and other build systems, letting the user treat a FaaS service like an outsourced build farm with global memoization of results. The bottom line: expressing systems and protocols as compositions of small, pure functions will lead to a new wave of "general-purpose" lambda computing, permitting us to transform many time-consuming operations into large numbers of functions executing with massive parallelism for short durations in the cloud.</p>
2018-02-08 00:30:00Keith Winstein (Stanford)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3038ISL Colloquium: Data Driven Dialog Managementhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/isl-colloquium-data-driven-dialog-management
<p>Modern virtual personal assistants provide a convenient interface for completing daily tasks via voice commands. An important consideration for these assistants is the ability to recover from automatic speech recognition (ASR) and natural language understanding (NLU) errors. I present our recent work on learning robust dialog policies to recover from these errors. To this end, we developed a user simulator which interacts with the assistant through voice commands in realistic scenarios with noisy audio, and use it to learn dialog policies through deep reinforcement learning. We show that dialogs generated by our simulator are indistinguishable from human generated dialogs, as determined by human evaluators. Furthermore, preliminary experimental results show that the learned policies in noisy environments achieve the same execution success rate with fewer dialog turns compared to fixed rule-based policies.</p>
2018-02-08 00:30:00Alborz Geramifard (Amazon)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3079Special Seminar: Keeping Moore’s Law Alive – Circuit Challenges and Opportunitieshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/special-seminar-keeping-moore%25E2%2580%2599s-law-alive-%25E2%2580%2593-circuit-challenges-and-opportunities
<p>Process scaling continues to march forward, with continuous advancement in materials and manufacturing providing ever-increasing transistor count and new capabilities. These integration advancements, though, come with difficult challenges: power consumption is more critical than ever, variations are difficult to manage, and interconnects do not see the same benefits from scaling as devices. In this talk I'll describe some of these challenges, as well as circuits research which is ongoing to address these and ensure that the next generation of computing devices can take advantage of the next generation of technology.</p>
2018-02-07 18:30:00Jim Tschanz (Circuit Research Lab, Intel Corporation)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3077OSA/SPIE Seminar: Changing the Paradigm: Digital Coherent Optical Communicationshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/osaspie-seminar-changing-paradigm-digital-coherent-optical-communications
<p>Embracing massively-parallel-CMOS Digital Signal Processing in 2005 revolutionized high speed optical communications; whether the need was to go across town or to link continents. Revolution provoked powerful entrenched interests to argue with religious intensity: "Kim is lying!" "It is not possible!". Many papers were published on how this does not work. Meanwhile, we were busy shipping products. Finally, in 2008, an eminent independent researcher, Joe Kahn, stood up in Acapulco and said "Kim and Maurice are right." The industry then quickly adopted the new religion.</p>
<p>This talk will provide an introduction to digital coherent optics, survey an ASIC for this that executes 240 Trillion integer operations per second, and then describe elements that enable optical products to reach for 600 Gb/s per wavelength.</p>
2018-02-07 01:45:00Kim Roberts (WaveLogic Science at Ciena)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3074Applied Physics/Physics Colloquium: Extrasolar Planetshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/applied-physicsphysics-colloquium-extrasolar-planets
<p>Over the past two decades, thousands of planets have been discovered orbiting nearby stars, and our perspective on the universe has changed. We now know planets are not rare. We also know planets are diverse - with our biased measurements, a vast range of planetary types and system architectures have been discovered, from systems containing hot Jupiter-like planets orbiting incredibly close to their star, to densely-packed systems of "super-Earth" planets in dynamically complex configurations. Most known systems are radically different than our own; to what extent this is a measurement bias remains unclear, and the question of the frequency of habitable planets is not yet settled. I will review key discoveries over the past decade, by both the Kepler mission and ground-based facilities, and provide perspective on the uncertainties. I will also focus on results from the Gemini Planet Imager, which has produced high-SNR images and spectra of giant planets orbiting far (10-100 AU) from young (10-300 million year) stars. Finally, I will review prospects from the near future (the James Webb Space Telescope) to potential Earth-characterizing missions.</p>
2018-02-07 00:30:00Prof. Bruce Macintosh (Stanford)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2993Statistics Seminar presents Yuting Weihttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/statistics-seminar-presents-yuting-wei
<p>TBA</p>
<hr /><p>The Statistics Seminars for Winter Quarter will be held in Room 380Y of the Sloan Mathematics Center in the Main Quad at 4:30pm on Tuesdays. </p>
2018-02-07 00:30:00Yuting Wei (UC Berkeley)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3068Theory Seminar presents Jacob Steinhardthttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/theory-seminar-presents-jacob-steinhardt
<hr /><p><em>Stanford Theory Seminar (formerly known as Stanford Algorithms Seminar/AFLB) is usually held in Gates 498 or Theory Lounge(Gates 463A).</em><br /><strong>Faculty Contact: <a href="https://sites.google.com/site/marywootters/" target="_blank">Mary Wootters</a></strong><br />Student Contact: Shashwat Silas</p>
2018-02-06 23:00:00Jacob Steinhardthttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/3054MATSCI 230: Materials Science Colloquium presents Dr. Naomi S. Ginsberghttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/matsci-230-materials-science-colloquium-presents-dr-naomi-s-ginsberg
<p>My research group interrogates dynamic nanoscale processes in energy-related materials, especially those involved in solar light harvesting, as is for example the case in photosynthesis. The most prevalent materials that we consider are intended for next-generation photovoltaics and are all formed through deposition from the solution-phase or using solution-phase self-assembly. Although this approach to material formation is facile and energy efficient, it often results in heterogeneous, kinetically trapped structures far from equilibrium. One of our main goals is therefore to elucidate how these materials' physical structure, including the nature of their heterogeneities and defects, determines their emergent optoelectronic properties. Ultimately, establishing such structure-function relationships will enable us to suggest specific solution-phase approaches to material formation that generate optimally performing functional materials.</p>
<p>Achieving a nanoscale understanding of dynamic processes in heterogeneous energy-related materials is challenging because it requires achieving unprecedented combinations of spatial and temporal measurement resolution. From a practical standpoint, we have therefore had to conceive of and develop multiple new forms of dynamic optical microscopies with sub-diffraction resolution, each tailored to a particular class of materials and their associated femtosecond-to-minutes dynamics. For resolving the dynamics of excitation energy flow we primarily employ ultrafast optical microscopies; to resolve dynamic material structures we primarily extend the applicability cathodoluminescence microscopy—the mapping of light emitted from a sample in a scanning electron microscopy—to soft materials otherwise too delicate to withstand electron beam irradiation. I will describe a recent example from each category, taking you first on a journey to discover the nature of energy landscapes in disordered, electronically-coupled molecular aggregates, and second, to elucidate the manner by which light can lead to steady-state charge carrier traps by inducing local changes in structure and composition in solid solutions of halides in hybrid perovskite photovoltaics.</p>
2018-02-02 23:00:00Dr. Naomi S. Ginsberg (UC Berkeley)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3046IT-Forum: Deterministic Random Matriceshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/it-forum-deterministic-random-matrices
<p>Random matrices have become a very active area of research in the recent years and have found enormous applications in modern mathematics, physics, engineering, biological modeling, and other fields. In this work, we focus on symmetric sign (+/-1) matrices (SSMs) that were originally utilized by Wigner to model the nuclei of heavy atoms in mid-50s. Assuming the entries of the upper triangular part to be independent +/-1 with equal probabilities, Wigner showed in his pioneering works that when the sizes of matrices grow, their empirical spectra converge to a non-random measure having a semicircular shape. Later, this fundamental result was improved and substantially extended to more general families of matrices and finer spectral properties. In many physical phenomena, however, the entries of matrices exhibit significant correlations. At the same time, almost all available analytical tools heavily rely on the independence condition making the study of matrices with structure (dependencies) very challenging. The few existing works in this direction consider very specific setups and are limited by particular techniques, lacking a unified framework and tight information-theoretic bounds that would quantify the exact amount of structure that matrices may possess without affecting the limiting semicircular form of their spectra.</p>
<p>From a different perspective, in many applications one needs to simulate random objects. Generation of large random matrices requires very powerful sources of randomness due to the independence condition, the experiments are impossible to reproduce, and atypical or non-random looking outcomes may appear with positive probability. Reliable deterministic construction of SSMs with random-looking spectra and low algorithmic and computational complexity is of particular interest due to the natural correspondence of SSMs and undirected graphs, since the latter are extensively used in combinatorial and CS applications e.g. for the purposes of derandomization. Unfortunately, most of the existing constructions of pseudo-random graphs focus on the extreme eigenvalues and do not provide guaranties on the whole spectrum. In this work, using binary Golomb sequences, we propose a simple completely deterministic construction of circulant SSMs with spectra converging to the semicircular law with the same rate as in the original Wigner ensemble. We show that this construction has close to lowest possible algorithmic complexity and is very explicit. Essentially, the algorithm requires at most 2log(n) bits implying that the real amount of randomness conveyed by the semicircular property is quite small.</p>
<hr /><p> </p>
<p>The Information Theory Forum (IT-Forum) at Stanford ISL is an interdisciplinary academic forum which focuses on mathematical aspects of information processing. With a primary emphasis on information theory, we also welcome researchers from signal processing, learning and statistical inference, control and optimization to deliver talks at our forum. We also warmly welcome industrial affiliates in the above fields. The forum is typically held in Packard 202 every Friday at 1:15 pm during the academic year.</p>
<p>The Information Theory Forum is organized by graduate students Jiantao Jiao and Yanjun Han. To suggest speakers, please contact any of the students.</p>
2018-02-02 21:15:00Ilya Soloveychik (Harvard)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3010SystemX Seminar: Quantum Supremacyhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/systemx-seminar-quantum-supremacy
<p>As microelectronics technology nears the end of exponential growth over time, known as Moore's law, there is a renewed interest in new computing paradigms such as quantum computing. A key step in the roadmap to build a scientifically or commercially useful quantum computer will be to demonstrate its exponentially growing computing power. I will explain how a 7 by 7 array of superconducting xmon qubits with nearest-neighbor coupling, and with programmable single- and two-qubit gate with errors of about 0.2%, can execute a modest depth quantum computation that fully entangles the 49 qubits. Sampling of the resulting output can be checked against a classical simulation to demonstrate proper operation of the quantum computer and compare its system error rate with predictions. With a computation space of 2^49 = 5 x 10^14 states, the quantum computation can only be checked using the biggest supercomputers. I will show experimental data towards this demonstration from a 9 qubit adjustable-coupler "gmon" device, which implements the basic sampling algorithm of quantum supremacy for a computational (Hilbert) space of about 500. We have begun testing of the quantum supremacy chip.</p>
2018-02-02 00:30:00Professor John Martinis (UC Santa Barbara)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2974E 311A: Women&#039;s Perspectives in Engineeringhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/e-311a-womens-perspectives-engineering
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<hr /><p>The ME Graduate Women's Group has offered ME/ENGR 311A: Women's Perspectives, a 1-unit credit seminar, every year since the group's inception in 1998. For credit or not, everyone is welcome to come! Speakers are asked to address the factors, experiences, and lessons that have been particularly important to their success in industry, academia, and... life.</p>
2018-02-02 00:30:00Amy Herr, Professor of Bioengineering (UC Berkeley)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3039Theory Seminar presents Ilya Soloveychikhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/theory-seminar-presents-ilya-soloveychik
<p>Random matrices have become a very active area of research in the recent years and have found enormous applications in modern mathematics, physics, engineering, biological modeling, and other fields. In this work, we focus on symmetric sign (+/-1) matrices (SSMs) that were originally utilized by Wigner to model the nuclei of heavy atoms in mid-50s. Assuming the entries of the upper triangular part to be independent +/-1 with equal probabilities, Wigner showed in his pioneering works that when the sizes of matrices grow, their empirical spectra converge to a non-random measure having a semicircular shape. Later, this fundamental result was improved and substantially extended to more general families of matrices and finer spectral properties. In many physical phenomena, however, the entries of matrices exhibit significant correlations. At the same time, almost all available analytical tools heavily rely on the independence condition making the study of matrices with structure (dependencies) very challenging. The few existing works in this direction consider very specific setups and are limited by particular techniques, lacking a unified framework and tight information-theoretic bounds that would quantify the exact amount of structure that matrices may possess without affecting the limiting semicircular form of their spectra.</p>
<p>From a different perspective, in many applications one needs to simulate random objects. Generation of large random matrices requires very powerful sources of randomness due to the independence condition, the experiments are impossible to reproduce, and atypical or non-random looking outcomes may appear with positive probability. Reliable deterministic construction of SSMs with random-looking spectra and low algorithmic and computational complexity is of particular interest due to the natural correspondence of SSMs and undirected graphs, since the latter are extensively used in combinatorial and CS applications e.g. for the purposes of derandomization. Unfortunately, most of the existing constructions of pseudo-random graphs focus on the extreme eigenvalues and do not provide guaranties on the whole spectrum. In this work, using binary Golomb sequences, we propose a simple completely deterministic construction of circulant SSMs with spectra converging to the semicircular law with the same rate as in the original Wigner ensemble. We show that this construction has close to lowest possible algorithmic complexity and is very explicit. Essentially, the algorithm requires at most 2log(n) bits implying that the real amount of randomness conveyed by the semicircular property is quite small.</p>
<hr /><p><em>Stanford Theory Seminar (formerly known as Stanford Algorithms Seminar/AFLB) is usually held in Gates 498 or Theory Lounge(Gates 463A).</em><br /><strong>Faculty Contact: <a href="https://sites.google.com/site/marywootters/" target="_blank">Mary Wootters</a></strong><br />Student Contact: Shashwat Silas</p>
2018-02-02 00:15:00Ilya Soloveychik (Harvard)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3053Networking Seminar: Clipper: A Low-Latency, General-Purpose Prediction Serving Systemhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/networking-seminar-clipper-low-latency-general-purpose-prediction-serving-system
<p>Machine learning is being deployed in a growing number of applications which demand real-time, accurate, and robust predictions under heavy serving loads. However, most machine learning frameworks and systems only address model training and not deployment.</p>
<p>Clipper is an open-source, general-purpose model-serving system that addresses these challenges. Interposing between applications that consume predictions and the machine-learning models that produce predictions, Clipper simplifies the model deployment process by adopting a modular serving architecture and isolating models in their own containers, allowing them to be evaluated using the same runtime environment as that used during training. Clipper's modular architecture provides simple mechanisms for scaling out models to meet increased throughput demands and performing fine-grained physical resource allocation for each model. Further, by abstracting models behind a uniform serving interface, Clipper allows developers to compose many machine-learning models within a single application to support increasingly common techniques such as ensemble methods, multi-armed bandit algorithms, and prediction cascades. In this talk I will provide an overview of the Clipper serving system and then discuss some of our work developing Clipper into an active open-source project.</p>
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<p>Stanford's NetSeminar is a biweekly seminar covering networking-related topics. Speakers come from academia and industry and the talks are open to the public. When possible, talks will be recorded and posted online. We typically start at 12:15pm at Gates Bld — Room 104, unless otherwise mentioned.</p>
<p>NetSeminar is run by graduate students, and it is generously supported by the Stanford Computer Forum.</p>
2018-02-01 23:00:00Dan Crankshaw (UC Berkeley)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3062OSA/SPIE Seminar: Nonlinear Feedback-Driven Complex Laser-Material Interactionshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/osaspie-seminar-nonlinear-feedback-driven-complex-laser-material-interactions
<p>Ultrafast laser-material interactions have diverse scientific, industrial and medical applications. Prior to our work, this process has largely been idealized as a one-way interaction — the laser beam modifies the material — end of the story. The idea of the material modifying the laser beam, in return, and that this could open new doors was apparently overlooked. Such two-way interactions either did not occur, or were unrecognized, if present, and actively prevented, when recognized. Our approach is to explicitly design for and exploit such interactions, and has already led to several striking advances. We developed our approach motivated by our prior experience in mode-locking of lasers: Mode-locking works by creating higher "gain" for modes that lock up in phase over having random phases, which leads to a coherent structure in time. Could we do something similar in laser-material interactions? Here, higher "gain" is achieved by invoking nonlinearities in the form of positive feedback between laser beam-induced changes in the material and material change-induced effects back on the laser beam. With this approach, we first showed that we could create laser-induced spatial nanostructures on various material surfaces with unprecedented uniformity (Ilday et al., Nature Photon., 2013) by locking the modes in space. Afterwards, we have applied the same concept to invent a new regime of laser-material ablation (Ilday et al., Nature, 2016), to create self-organized 3D structures inside silicon (Ilday et al., Nature Photon., 2017), to drive self-assembly of colloidal nanoparticles (Ilday et al., Nature Commun., 2017), which will be discussed briefly.</p>
2018-02-01 23:00:00Prof. F. Ömer Ilday (Bilkent University)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3078SmartGrid Seminar: Deepak Divanhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/smartgrid-seminar-deepak-divan
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<p>The power infrastructure is poised for dramatic change. Drivers include rapid growth in the deployment of exponential technologies such as solar, wind, storage, EVs and power electronics; improved economic, operational and energy efficiency; and higher grid resiliency under cyber-attacks and natural disasters. Data from the field shows severe limitations with using the traditional top-down centralized control strategy, and an alternate decentralized approach with dynamic control capability is needed. The 'future' grid will involve a full integration of the physical and transactive grids, and will be more dynamic, with bidirectional power flows, and a real-time market that all generators and consumers will be able to participate in. This will translate into unique requirements for autonomous distributed control using power converters distributed around the grid. The presentation will highlight several key issues and possible solutions for addressing them, showing that decentralized dynamic control using power electronics is very feasible and provides a path to a future grid that is more resource-efficient, flexible, resilient and can support higher levels of PV and wind energy penetration.<span><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The power infrastructure is poised for dramatic change. Drivers include rapid growth in the deployment of exponential technologies such as solar, wind, storage, EVs and power electronics; improved economic, operational and energy efficiency; and higher grid resiliency under cyber-attacks and natural disasters. Data from the field shows severe limitations with using the traditional top-down centralized control strategy, and an alternate decentralized approach with dynamic control capability is needed. The ‘future’ grid will involve a full integration of the physical and transactive grids, and will be more dynamic, with bidirectional power flows, and a real-time market that all generators and consumers will be able to participate in. This will translate into unique requirements for autonomous distributed control using power converters distributed around the grid. The presentation will highlight several key issues and possible solutions for addressing them, showing that decentralized dynamic control using power electronics is very feasible and provides a path to a future grid that is more resource-efficient, flexible, resilient and can support higher levels of PV and wind energy penetration.</span></p>
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<p>The speakers are renowned scholars or industry experts in power and energy systems. We believe they will bring novel insights and fruitful discussions to Stanford. This seminar is offered as a 1 unit seminar course, CEE 272T/EE292T. Interested students can take this seminar course for credit by completing a project based on the topics presented in this course.</p>
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2018-02-01 21:30:00Deepak Divan (Georgia Institute of Technology)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2997EE380 Computer Systems Colloquium: Exploiting modern microarchitectures: Meltdown, Spectre, and other hardware attackshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/ee380-computer-systems-colloquium-exploiting-modern-microarchitectures-meltdown
<p>Recently disclosed vulnerabilities against modern high performance computer microarchitectures known as 'Meltdown' and 'Spectre' are among an emerging wave of hardware focused attacks. These include cache side channel exploits against underlying shared resources, which arise as a result of common industry-wide performance optimizations. More broadly, attacks against hardware are entering a new phase of sophistication that will see more in the months ahead. This talk will describe several of these attacks, how they can be mitigated, and generally what we can do as an industry to bring performance without trading security.</p>
<hr /><p>The Stanford EE Computer Systems Colloquium (EE380) meets on Wednesdays 4:30-5:45 throughout the academic year. Talks are given before a live audience in Room B03 in the basement of the Gates Computer Science Building on the Stanford Campus. The live talks (and the videos hosted at Stanford and on YouTube) are open to the public.</p>
2018-02-01 00:30:00Jon Masters (Redhat)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3020Applied Physics/Physics Colloquium: Critical Metals: Lessons from quantum Monte Carlo studieshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/applied-physicsphysics-colloquium-critical-metals-lessons-quantum-monte-carlo-studies
<p>TBA</p>
2018-01-31 00:30:00Prof. Erez Berg (University of Chicago)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2992Statistics Seminar: Understanding rare events in models of statistical mechanicshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/statistics-seminar-understanding-rare-events-models-statistical-mechanics
<p>Statistical mechanics models are ubiquitous at the interface of probability theory, information theory, and inference problems in high dimensions. To develop a refined understanding of such models, one often needs to study not only typical fluctuation theory but also the realm of atypical events. In this talk, we will focus on sparse networks and polymer models on lattices. In particular we will consider the rare events that a sparse random network has an atypical number of certain local structures, and that a polymer in random media has atypical weight. The random geometry associated with typical instances of these rare events is an important topic of inquiry: this geometry can involve merely local structures, or more global ones. We will discuss recent solutions to certain longstanding questions and connections to stochastic block models, exponential random graphs, eigenvalues of random matrices, and fundamental growth models.</p>
2018-01-31 00:30:00Shirshendu Ganguly (UC Berkeley)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3067Neurosciences Institute Special Seminar: Using modern, deep Bayesian inference to analyse neural data and understand neural systemshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/neurosciences-institute-special-seminar-using-modern-deep-bayesian-inference-analyse
<p><span>I consider how Bayesian inference can address the analytical and theoretical challenges presented by increasingly complex, high-dimensional neuroscience datasets. With the advent of Bayesian deep neural networks, GPU computing and automatic differentiation it is becoming increasingly possible to perform large-scale Bayesian analyses of data, simultaneously inferring complex biological phenomena and experimental confounds. I present a proof-of-principle: inferring causal connectivity from an all-optical experiment combining calcium imaging and cell-specific optogenetic stimulation. The model simultaneously infers spikes from fluorescence, models low-rank activity and the extent of off-target optogenetic stimulation, and explicitly gives uncertainty estimates about the inferred connection matrix. Further, there is considerable evidence that humans and animals use Bayes theorem to reason optimally about uncertainty. I show that one particular Bayesian inference method — sampling — emerges naturally when combining classical sparse-coding models with a biophysically motivated energetic cost of achieving reliable responses. We understand these results theoretically by noting that the resulting combined objective approximates the objective for a classical Bayesian method: variational inference. Given this strong theoretical underpinning, we are able to extend the model to multi-layered networks modelling MNIST digits, recurrent networks, and fast recurrent networks.</span></p>
2018-01-30 18:00:00Laurence Aitchison (University of Cambridge)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3030SystemX Seminar: Coherent Ising machines for combinatorial optimization - Optical neural networks operating at the quantum limithttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/systemx-seminar-coherent-ising-machines-combinatorial-optimization-optical-neural
<p>Optimization problems with discrete and continuous variables are ubiquitous in numerous important areas, including operations and scheduling, drug discovery, wireless communications, finance, integrated circuit design, compressed sensing and machine learning. Despite rapid advances in both algorithm and digital computing technology, even modest sized optimization problems that arise in practice may be very difficult to solve on modern digital computers. One alternative of current interest is the adiabatic quantum computing (AQC) or quantum annealing (QA). Sophisticated AQC/QA devices are already under development, but providing dense connectivity between qubits remains a major challenge with serious implications for the efficiency of AQC/QA approaches. In this talk, we will introduce a novel computing system, coherent Ising machine, and describe its theoretical and experimental performance. We start with the physics of quantum-to-classical crossover as a computational mechanism and how to construct such physical devices as quantum neurons and synapses. We show the performance comparison against various classical neural network models implemented in CPU and supercomputers as algorithms. We end the talk by introducing the portal of the QNNCloud service system based on the coherent Ising machines.</p>
2018-01-29 22:00:00Yoshihisa Yamamoto (Stanford)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3028IT-Forum: Recent Advances in Algorithmic High-Dimensional Robust Statisticshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/it-forum-recent-advances-algorithmic-high-dimensional-robust-statistics
<p>Fitting a model to a collection of observations is one of the quintessential problems in machine learning. Since any model is only approximately valid, an estimator that is useful in practice must also be robust in the presence of model misspecification. It turns out that there is a striking tension between robustness and computational efficiency. Even for the most basic high-dimensional tasks, such as robustly computing the mean and covariance, until recently the only known estimators were either hard to compute or could only tolerate a negligible fraction of errors.</p>
<p>In this talk, I will survey the recent progress in algorithmic high-dimensional robust statistics. I will describe the first robust and efficiently computable estimators for several fundamental statistical tasks that were previously thought to be computationally intractable. These include robust estimation of mean and covariance in high dimensions, and robust learning of various latent variable models. The new robust estimators are scalable in practice and yield a number of applications in exploratory data analysis.</p>
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<p>The Information Theory Forum (IT-Forum) at Stanford ISL is an interdisciplinary academic forum which focuses on mathematical aspects of information processing. With a primary emphasis on information theory, we also welcome researchers from signal processing, learning and statistical inference, control and optimization to deliver talks at our forum. We also warmly welcome industrial affiliates in the above fields. The forum is typically held in Packard 202 every Friday at 1:15 pm during the academic year.</p>
<p>The Information Theory Forum is organized by graduate students Jiantao Jiao and Yanjun Han. To suggest speakers, please contact any of the students.</p>
2018-01-26 21:15:00Ilias Diakonikolas (USC) https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3009SystemX Seminar: Using the Stanford Driving Simulator for Human Machine Interaction Studieshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/systemx-seminar-using-stanford-driving-simulator-human-machine-interaction-studies
<p><span>The driving simulator at Stanford is used for human-in-the-loop, human-machine interaction (HMI) driving studies. Many of the studies focus on shared control between humans and autonomous systems. The simulator’s toolset collects objective driving behavior data directly from the simulator, as well as data streams from eye trackers, cameras and other physiological sensors that we employ to understand human responses to myriad circumstances in the simulated environment. This presentation will describe the hardware and software associated with the driving studies, what is possible and show some similar labs at other universities. </span></p>
2018-01-26 00:30:00Larry Cathey (Vail Lab, Stanford University)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2973ISL Colloquium: Communication in Machine Learninghttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/isl-colloquium-communication-machine-learning
<p>This Information Systems Seminar talk investigates the converse use of communication technologies and methods, sometimes in alternative forms or with different names, in machine learning. The next generation of internet communication has many uses for machine learning. This talk instead looks in more detail at some structures used in machine learning and draws analogies to methods previously used in communication. For instance, the recasting of a neural network with ReLu (rectifier linear unit) as having a state (linear or nonlinear) allows some analogy with hidden Markov models and state machines. Further, some of the back-propagation learning methods have analogies with forward-backward decoding algorithms that are in use as communication decoders. The question is thus posed as to if some of these communication methods might help certain applications of machine learning that are not viewed initially as communication problems. Some of these topics will be further examined in EE392AA (spring quarter), which can be used for EE MS Communications Depth sequence.</p>
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<p><strong>ISL Colloquium: </strong>The Information Systems Laboratory Colloquium (ISLC) is typically held in Packard 101 every Thursday at 4:15 pm during the academic year. Refreshments are usually served after the talk.</p>
<p>The Colloquium is organized by graduate students Martin Zhang, Farzan Farnia, Reza Takapoui, and Zhengyuan Zhou.</p>
2018-01-26 00:15:00John Cioffi (Stanford)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3015ChEM-H Special Seminar: Inverse Problems and Unsupervised Learning with applications to Cryo-Electron Microscopyhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/chem-h-special-seminar-inverse-problems-and-unsupervised-learning-applications-cryo
<p>Cryo-Electron Microscopy (cryo-EM) is an imaging technology that is revolutionizing structural biology; the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2017 was recently awarded to Jacques Dubochet, Joachim Frank and Richard Henderson "for developing cryo-electron microscopy for the high-resolution structure determination of biomolecules in solution".</p>
<p>Cryo-electron microscopes produce a large number of very noisy two-dimensional projection images of individual frozen molecules. Unlike related methods, such as computed tomography (CT), the viewing direction of each image is unknown. The unknown directions, together with extreme levels of noise and additional technical factors, make the determination of the structure of molecules challenging.</p>
<p>While other methods for structure determination, such as x-ray crystallography and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), measure ensembles of molecules, cryo-electron microscopes produce images of individual molecules. Therefore, cryo-EM could potentially be used to study mixtures of different conformations of molecules. Indeed, current algorithms have been very successful at analyzing homogeneous samples, and can recover some distinct conformations mixed in solutions, but, the determination of multiple conformations, and in particular, continuums of similar conformations (continuous heterogeneity), remains one of the open problems in cryo-EM.</p>
<p>I will discuss a one-dimensional discrete model problem, Heterogeneous Multireference Alignment, which captures many of the properties of the cryo-EM problem. I will then discuss different components which we are introducing in order to address the problem of continuous heterogeneity in cryo-EM: 1. "hyper-molecules," the mathematical formulation of truly continuously heterogeneous molecules, 2. Computational and numerical tools for expressing associated priors, and 3. Bayesian algorithms for inverse problems with an unsupervised-learning component for recovering such hyper-molecules in cryo-EM.</p>
2018-01-26 00:00:00Roy Lederman, Ph.D. (Princeton University)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3029SCIEN Talk: Learning where to look in 360 environmentshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/scien-talk-learning-where-look-360-environments
<p>Many vision tasks require not just categorizing a well-composed human-taken photo, but also intelligently deciding "where to look" in order to get a meaningful observation in the first place. We explore how an agent can anticipate the visual effects of its actions, and develop policies for learning to look around actively---both for the sake of a specific recognition task as well as for generic exploratory behavior. In addition, we examine how a system can learn from unlabeled video to mimic human videographer tendencies, automatically deciding where to look in unedited 360 degree panoramas. Finally, to facilitate 360 video processing, we introduce spherical convolution, which allows application of off-the-shelf deep networks and object detectors to 360 imagery.</p>
2018-01-25 00:30:00Professor Kristen Grauman (University of Texas at Austin)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2983EE380 Computer Systems Colloquium: Personal BioHackinghttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/ee380-computer-systems-colloquium-personal-biohacking
<p>"Cells Are Not Computers and DNA is Not a Programming Language and That's Ok"</p>
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<p>The Stanford EE Computer Systems Colloquium (EE380) meets on Wednesdays 4:30-5:45 throughout the academic year. Talks are given before a live audience in Room B03 in the basement of the Gates Computer Science Building on the Stanford Campus. The live talks (and the videos hosted at Stanford and on YouTube) are open to the public.</p>
2018-01-25 00:30:00Josiah Zayer (The Odin)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3019Applied Physics/Physics Colloquium: Searches for new Physics with Nuclear Spin Precessionhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/applied-physicsphysics-colloquium-searches-new-physics-nuclear-spin-precession
<p>Prof. Mike Romalis of Princeton University will give the Applied Physics/Physics colloquium on Jan. 23, 2018, entitled "Searches for new Physics with Nuclear Spin Precession."</p>
2018-01-24 00:30:00Prof. Mike Romalis (Princeton University)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2991OSA/SPIE Seminar: Imaging at the Nanoscale Within Live Brain Tissueshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/osaspie-seminar-imaging-nanoscale-within-live-brain-tissues
<p>Single molecule microscopy allows nanometer localization of the detected emitters and subtle probing of their spatio-temporal nano-environment including in living neuronal cells [1]. I will present several single molecule strategies using different nano-emitters to probe complex and confined neuronal environments.</p>
<p>These include the development of a new probe delivery method in the live animal brain to perform the first single quantum dot tracking in acute brain slices [2] and an original strategy based on phase imaging aiming towards 3D single particle tracking and 3D super-resolution microscopy in thick cellular environments [3].</p>
<p>For deep tissue imaging, single walled carbon nanotubes, which bear optical resonances in the near infrared and nanoscale dimensions, are particularly promising [4]. I will show that, long trajectories (&gt;10 min) of nanotubes diffusing in the brain extracellular space can be recorded at the single nanotube level. Analysis their movements provides super-resolved maps of tissue structuration which can be modulated upon biochemical digestion of the brain extracellular matrix in live animals [5].</p>
2018-01-24 00:15:00Dr. Laurent Cognet (University of Bordeaux, LP2N - Institut d’Optique &amp; CNRS, Talence, France)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3006The ATLAS Reverse-GPS System: High-Throughput Wildlife Trackinghttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/general/atlas-reverse-gps-system-high-throughput-wildlife-tracking
<p>ATLAS is a reverse-GPS system that localizes radio transmitters (tags) attached to wild animals. The tags are lightweight (down to less than 1g), inexpensive, and energy-efficient. These properties have allowed us to track animals at unprecedented spatial and temporal resolution, leading to a big-data/high-throughput revolution in movement ecology. One ATLAS system with up to 11 receivers has been deployed for over 3 years in Northern Israel, last summer two more were deployed (in the Netherlands and in England), and one more is currently being deployed.</p>
<p>The talk will describe the multifaceted challenges that the system has posed, innovations and engineering efforts that were necessary to meet the challenges, and the impact of the system on wildlife ecology. In particular, I will describe work on localization and clock synchronization, on tag development and production, on receiver hardware and software (base stations), on data collection and visualization, and on system configuration and monitoring. I will also clearly list key remaining challenges and our own future plans.</p>
<p>The talk will also briefly explain the overall context: what other options exist for GPS-quality wildlife tracking and why no other technique can approach the throughput and cost of ATLAS.</p>
<p>This is joint work with Ran Nathan, Yotam Orchan, Tony Weiss, and many other collaborators.</p>
<p>http://www.tau.ac.il/~stoledo/tags/</p>
2018-01-22 18:00:00Sivan Toledo (Tel-Aviv University)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3005Intro to Unity Workshophttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/intro-unity-workshop
<p><strong>From Rabbit Hole VR Club:</strong> Come build your own game from the ground up using Unity, the main game engine used for VR development in the industry. We will go over most aspects necessary for using Unity, including use of the Asset Store, basic programming structures of Unity scripts, creating user interfaces, and building a publishable exe.</p>
<p>The workshop will be lead by Khoi Le, a Rabbit Hole member who has been working with Unity for 2 years. The event will be held Saturday, 1/20 in Lab64 from 6-8 pm. Bring your laptop and make sure to download Unity before coming.</p>
2018-01-21 02:00:00lead by Rabbit Hole member Khoi Lehttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/3004SystemX Seminar: Programmable and Smart Silicon Interposers for 3D Chip Stackshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/systemx-seminar-programmable-and-smart-silicon-interposers-3d-chip-stacks
<p>With increased demands for computation and the slowdown of CMOS scaling, alternative methods for further miniaturization of electronics are gaining momentum. Heterogeneous integration (HI) of chips from various manufacturing lines on to a silicon interposer is a newly recognized approach, which has been used in a number of high-performance applications. However, these 3D-IC chip stacks are time-consuming to develop and are application-specific, resulting in prohibitive costs.</p>
<p>Similar cost issues have been addressed in the form of field programmable gate arrays. In an analogous fashion, programmable silicon interposers open new possibilities of design-reuse of silicon for multiple applications, resulting in cost savings and time to market advantages. Programmable re-use of silicon interposers also enables just-in-time manufacturing to simultaneously produce several smaller lots made with high-mix of components.</p>
<p>In addition, programmable silicon interposers for 3D stacking allow system-level control of functions that can be embedded in the interposer, such as power management, built in self-test, and manufacturing defect repair. Power management techniques previously applied to single chip solutions can be re-architected to achieve higher system level efficiency in these 3D chip stack. We will demonstrate one such system built with a smart, programmable silicon interposer from zGlue – the first commercial implementation of a product in this category. This technology will help proliferate internet of things (IoT) devices, give a broader array of choices to product designers, and will accelerate proliferation of electronics in ultra-small form factor for healthcare, industrial as well as consumer space.</p>
2018-01-19 00:30:00Jawad Nasrullah (President and Chief Technology Officer, zGlue)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2972SmartGrid Seminar: Adam Wiermanhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/smartgrid-seminar-adam-wierman
<p>The speakers are renowned scholars or industry experts in power and energy systems. We believe they will bring novel insights and fruitful discussions to Stanford. This seminar is offered as a 1 unit seminar course, CEE 272T/EE292T. Interested students can take this seminar course for credit by completing a project based on the topics presented in this course.</p>
2018-01-18 21:30:00Adam Wierman (Caltech)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2996SCIEN Talk: Driverless Anything and the Role of LiDARhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/scien-talk-driverless-anything-and-role-lidar
<p>LiDAR, or light detection and ranging, is a versatile light-based remote sensing technology that has been the subject of a great deal of attention in recent times. It has shown up in a number of media venues, and has even led to public debate about engineering choices of a well-known electric car company, Tesla Motors. During this talk the speaker will provide some background on LiDAR and discuss why it is a key link to the future autonomous vehicle ecosystem as well as its strong connection to power electronics technologies.</p>
2018-01-18 00:30:00Dr. Alex Lidow (Efficient Power Conversion)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2982EE380 Computer Systems Colloquium: Combining Physical and Statistical Models in Order to Narrow Uncertainty in Projected of Global Warminghttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/ee380-computer-systems-colloquium-combining-physical-and-statistical-models-order
<p>A key question in climate science is How much global warming should we expect for a given increase in the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gasses like carbon dioxide? One strategy for addressing this question is to run physical models of the global climate system but these models vary in their estimates of future warming by about a factor of two. Our research has attempted to narrow this range of uncertainty around model-projected future warming and to assess whether the upper or lower end of the model range is more likely. We showed that there are strong statistical relationships between how models simulate fundamental features of the Earth's energy budget over the recent past, and how much warming models simulate in the future. Importantly, we find that models that match observations the best over the recent past, tend to simulate more warming in the future than the average model. Thus, statistically combining information from physical models and observations tells us that we should expect more warming (with smaller uncertainty ranges) than we would expect if we were just looking at physical models in isolation and ignoring observations.</p>
2018-01-18 00:30:00Patrick Brown (Carnegie Institution for Science at Stanford)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/3001Applied Physics/Physics Colloquium: Symmetries of Timehttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/applied-physicsphysics-colloquium-symmetries-time
<p>Time is a basic element in our models of the physical world, as is symmetry. Several issues at the frontiers of modern physics concern the interplay of those concepts. Elaborating on this theme, I will survey the current state of axions and time crystals, including very recent work.</p>
2018-01-17 00:30:00Frank Wilczek (MIT)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2990Martin Luther King, Jr., Day (holiday, no classes).https://ee.stanford.edu/event/general/martin-luther-king-jr-day-holiday-no-classes
<p>2018, January 15 (Mon) Martin Luther King, Jr., Day (holiday, no classes).</p>
2018-01-15 08:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2985EE Distinguished Lecture: Lars Blackmore, SpaceXhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/department/ee-distinguished-lecture-lars-blackmore-spacex
<p>SpaceX's reusable rocket program aims to reduce the cost of space travel by making rockets that can land, refuel and refly, instead of being thrown away after every flight. Autonomous precision landing of a rocket is a unique problem, which has been likened to balancing a rubber broomstick on your hand in a windstorm. Rockets do not have wings (unlike airplanes) and they cannot rely on a high ballistic coefficient to fly in a straight line (unlike missiles). In the past two years, SpaceX has successfully landed nineteen rockets, some of which were on dry land at Cape Canaveral, and some of which were on floating platforms in the ocean. This talk will discuss the challenges involved, how these challenges were overcome, and next steps towards rapid reusability.</p>
2018-01-12 23:30:00Lars Blackmore (SpaceX)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2961SystemX Seminar: Smart Internet Connections: Your internet connection’s use of artificial intelligence and machine learninghttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/systemx-seminar-smart-internet-connections-your-internet-connection%25E2%2580%2599s-use-artificial
<p>The next generation of internet communication has many uses for machine learning. This talk will review some of the applications for and types of 5th-generation converged software-defined communication networks, including the important access links to all users/consumers and devices/things, upon which humanity increasing and crucially depends. The general problem well addressed by communications theory is the inference from a large set of data (sometimes called a "channel" output) of a desired/intended conclusion (sometimes called the "channel input" or data "transmitted"); this is sometimes also known as "decoding." Many learning systems like search engines, detection of diseases, facial recognition, etc are all forms of this "decoding." Many of the methods for "machine learning" can be recast in this more general setting, and as well then re-used to advance further the art of next-generation communication. The talk will encourage further investigation into both the "learning" and advancement of the future networks that will increasingly connect us all. Some of these topics will be further examined in EE392AA (spring quarter), which can be used for EE MS Communications Depth sequence.</p>
2018-01-12 00:30:00J.M. Cioffi (Stanford)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2970SCIEN Talk: Advancing Healthcare with AI and VRhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/scien-talk-advancing-healthcare-ai-and-vr
<p>Quality, cost, and accessibility form an iron triangle that has prevented healthcare from achieving accelerated advancement in the last few decades. Improving any one of the three metrics may lead to degradation of the other two. However, thanks to recent breakthroughs in artificial intelligence (AI) and virtual reality (VR), this iron triangle can finally be shattered. In this talk, I will share the experience of developing DeepQ, an AI platform for AI-assisted diagnosis and VR-facilitated surgery. I will present three healthcare initiatives we have undertaken since 2012: Healthbox, Tricorder, and VR surgery, and explain how AI and VR play pivotal roles in improving diagnosis accuracy and treatment effectiveness. And more specifically, how we have dealt with not only big data analytics, but also small data learning, which is typical in the medical domain. The talk concludes with roadmaps and a list of open research issues in signal processing and AI to achieve precision medicine and surgery.</p>
2018-01-11 00:30:00Dr. Edward Chang ((DeepQ) HTC)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2981Radio Club meeting: Talk on cracking the Enigma Machine, featuring a real, working machine from WWIIhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/radio-club-meeting-talk-cracking-enigma-machine-featuring-real-working-machine-wwii
<p>The Enigma machine was a cunning invention and major advance in cipher technology, which gave the Germans confidence in the secrecy of their messages during World War II. This was a reasonable confidence but proved to be wrong and eventually fatal. The story of the Allies conquering the overwhelming odds against breaking the Nazi code is a story of ingenuity and intrigue. Alan Turing led the Allies efforts to break the Enigma, which significantly shortened the war and ushered in the age of computers.</p>
<p>The success of cracking the Enigma was kept secret for 29 years after the end of WW2, despite 15,000 people working on the effort. This secrecy is especially incredible for us living in the age of the internet, WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden. Over 35,000 Enigma machines were<br />manufactured, but only 350 are known to exist today. You will see one of these rare machines and have a chance to type in your own secret messages.</p>
2018-01-10 03:30:00Ralph Simpson (IBM and Cisco)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2971Applied Physics/Physics Colloquium: Quantum vs. Classical optimization: A Status Update on the Arms Racehttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/applied-physicsphysics-colloquium-quantum-vs-classical-optimization-status-update-arms
<p>Can quantum computers meet the tantalizing promise of solving complex calculations - such as optimization problems or database queries - faster than classical computers based on transistor technologies? Although IBM recently opened up their five-qubit programmable quantum computer to the public to tinker with, the holy grail of a useful large-scale programmable universal quantum computer is decades away. While working mid-scale programmable special-purpose quantum optimization machines exist, a conclusive detection of quantum speedup remains controversial despite recent promising results. In this talk, a head-to-head comparison between quantum and classical optimization approaches is given. Current quantum annealing technologies must outperform classical devices to claim the crown in the race for quantum speedup.</p>
2018-01-10 00:15:00Helmut Katzgraber (Texas A&amp;M University; Santa Fe Institute)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2969First day of Winter quarter; instruction begins for all students.https://ee.stanford.edu/event/general/first-day-winter-quarter-instruction-begins-all-students
<p>Welcome to winter quarter 2018!</p>
2018-01-08 16:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2966Winter Closurehttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/department/winter-closure
<p>Winter closure for the Stanford campus begins Friday, December 22, 2017 through Monday, January 8, 2018.</p>
<p>Regular operations end on Friday, Dec. 22, 2017 and resume on Monday, Jan. 8, 2018.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>Have a great break – See you in 2018!</strong></p>
2017-12-22 22:00:00 to 2018-01-08 16:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2390Food with Friends!https://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/food-friends
<p>Take a break from studying for finals and enjoy some pizza, beverages and company with your EE peers!</p>
<p><em>All food &amp; drinks are first come, first serve.</em></p>
2017-12-11 20:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2956IEEE-EDS Distinguished Lecture: 2D Electronics – Opportunities and Challengeshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/ieee-eds-distinguished-lecture-2d-electronics-%25E2%2580%2593-opportunities-and-challenges
<p>During the past decade, 2D (two-dimensional) materials have attracted enormous attention from various scientific communities ranging from chemists and physicists to material scientists and device engineers. The rise of the 2D materials began in 2004 with the work on graphene done at Manchester University and Georgia Tech. Particularly the observed high carrier mobilities raised early expectations that graphene could be a perfect electronic material. It soon became clear, however, that due its zero bandgap graphene is not suitable for most electronic devices, in particular transistors. On the other hand, researchers have extended their work to 2D materials beyond graphene and the number of 2D materials under investigation is continuously rising. Many of them possess sizeable bandgaps and therefore are considered to be useful for transistors. Indeed, the progress in the field of 2D transistors has been rapid and experimental MOSFETs using semiconducting 2D channel materials have been reported by many groups. A recent achievement was the demonstration of a well-performing 1-nm gate MoS2 MOSFET in 2016. On the other hand, and in spite of the progress in the field, the debate on the real prospects of the 2D materials for future electronics is still controversial.</p>
<p>In the present lecture, the most important classes of 2D materials are introduced and the potential of 2D transistors is assessed as realistically as possible. To this end, two material properties – bandgap and mobility – are examined in detail and the mobility-bandgap tradeoff is discussed. The state of the art of 2D transistors is reviewed by summarizing relevant results of leading groups in the field, presenting examples of the lecturer's own work on 2D electronics, and comparing the performance of 2D transistors to that of competing conventional transistors. Based on these considerations, a balanced view of both the pros and cons of 2D transistors is provided and their potential in both the More Moore (digital CMOS) and the More Than Moore domains of semiconductor electronics is discussed. It is shown that due to the rather conservative CMOS scaling scenario of the 2015 ITRS (compared to the more aggressive scenarios of the previous ITRS editions) it will be difficult for 2D materials to make inroads into mainstream CMOS. However, due to their specific properties (for example, 2D materials are bendable and stretchable) they may enable entirely new applications in the More Than Moore domain.</p>
2017-12-09 00:00:00Prof. Frank Schwierz (TU Ilmenau)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2947Topics in International Technology Management Autumn 2017https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/topics-international-technology-management-autumn-2017-3
<p>US-ATMC 25th Anniversary Series of Public Seminars: Theme for 2017is "The Rise of Commercial Space Businesses in Asia"<br />Thursdays, 4:30 – 5:50 pm<br />October 5 – December 7, 2017</p>
<p>Distinguished guest speakers present new trends among firms from Asia or targeting Asia with businesses related to outer space, including telecommunications, space debris removal, payload launch services, space medicine, etc.</p>
2017-12-08 00:30:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2873SystemX Seminar: Materials and device innovations in the scaling and post-scaling erashttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/systemx-seminar-materials-and-device-innovations-scaling-and-post-scaling-eras
<p>With creative innovations and significant technical effort, semiconductor technology scaling is now continuing deeper into nm dimensions. The ultimate lateral dimensions, or ultimate number of layers in 3D stacking may be under debate, but not the fact that there are fundamental or practical (technical and economic) limits to exponential improvements. The industry is already transitioning towards an era in which innovations are enabling advantages for just one or two generations. This talk presents an overview of scaling showing examples of how innovations in materials, devices and design-technology co-optimization enabled scaling and continue to do so towards the 5nm and 3 nm nodes. We also discuss some of the fundamental limits of pitch scaling as well as perspectives on beyond pitch scaling approaches, 3D stacking and heterogeneous and system level integration that will allow to continue to enhance system capabilities, and how emerging applications such as neuromorphic computing impact and drive hardware requirements and development, and open new growth opportunities.</p>
2017-12-08 00:30:00Jorge Kittl (Advanced Logic Lab - Samsung Semiconductor, Inc.)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2948EE380 Computer Systems Colloquium: Petascale Deep Learning on a Single Chipshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/ee380-computer-systems-colloquium-petascale-deep-learning-single-chips
<p>Vathys.ai is a deep learning startup that has been developing a new deep learning processor architecture with the goal of massively improved energy efficiency and performance. The architecture is also designed to be highly scalable, amenable to next generation DL models. Although deep learning processors appear to be the "hot topic" of the day in computer architecture, the majority (we argue all) of such designs incorrectly identify the bottleneck as computation and thus neglect the true culprits in inefficiency; data movement and miscellaneous control flow processor overheads. This talk will cover many of the architectural strategies that the Vathys processor uses to reduce data movement and improve efficiency. The talk will also cover some circuit level innovations and will include a quantitative and qualitative comparison to many DL processor designs, including the Google TPU, demonstrating numerical evidence for massive improvements compared to the TPU and other such processors.</p>
<p>ABOUT THE COLLOQUIUM:</p>
<p>See the Colloquium website, http://ee380.stanford.edu, for scheduled speakers, FAQ, and additional information. Stanford and SCPD students can enroll in EE380 for one unit of credit. Anyone is welcome to attend; talks are webcast live and archived for on-demand viewing over the web.</p>
2017-12-07 00:30:00Tapabrata Ghosh (Ingemini LLC)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2888SCIEN &amp; EE 292E: Compressed Ultrafast Photography and Microscopy: Redefining the Limit of Passive Ultrafast Imaginghttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/scien-ee-292e-compressed-ultrafast-photography-and-microscopy-redefining-limit-passive
<p>High-speed imaging is an indispensable technology for blur-free observation of fast transient dynamics in virtually all areas including science, industry, defense, energy, and medicine. Unfortunately, the frame rates of conventional cameras are significantly constrained by their data transfer bandwidth and onboard storage. We demonstrate a two-dimensional dynamic imaging technique, compressed ultrafast photography (CUP), which can capture non-repetitive time-evolving events at up to 100 billion fps. Compared with existing ultrafast imaging techniques, CUP has a prominent advantage of measuring an x, y, t (x, y, spatial coordinates; t, time) scene with a single camera snapshot, thereby allowing observation of transient events occurring on a time scale down to tens of picoseconds. Thanks to the CUP technology, for the first time, the human can see light pulses on the fly. Because this technology advances the imaging frame rate by orders of magnitude, we now enter a new regime and open new visions.</p>
<p>In this talk, I will discuss our recent effort to develop a second-generation CUP system and demonstrate its applications at scales from macroscopic to microscopic. For the first time, we imaged photonic Mach cones and captured "Sonic Boom" of light in action. Moreover, by adapting CUP for microscopy, we enabled two-dimensional fluorescence lifetime imaging at an unprecedented speed. The advantage of CUP recording is that even visually simple systems can be scientifically interesting when they are captured at such a high speed. Given CUP's capability, we expect it to find widespread applications in both fundamental and applied sciences including biomedical research.</p>
2017-12-07 00:30:00Professor Liang Gao (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2946Special Seminar: Formal Methods meets Machine Learning: Explorations in Cyber-Physical Systems Designhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/special-seminar-formal-methods-meets-machine-learning-explorations-cyber-physical
<p>Cyber-physical systems (CPS) are computational systems tightly integrated with physical processes. Examples include modern automobiles, fly-by-wire aircraft, software-controlled medical devices, robots, and many more. In recent times, these systems have exploded in complexity due to the growing amount of software and networking integrated into physical environments via real-time control loops, as well as the growing use of machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) techniques. At the same time, these systems must be designed with strong verifiable guarantees.</p>
<p>In this talk, I will describe our research explorations at the intersection of machine learning and formal methods that address some of the challenges in CPS design. First, I will describe how machine learning techniques can be blended with formal methods to address challenges in specification, design, and verification of industrial CPS. In particular, I will discuss the use of formal inductive synthesis --- algorithmic synthesis from examples with formal guarantees — for CPS design. Next, I will discuss how formal methods can be used to improve the level of assurance in systems that rely heavily on machine learning, such as autonomous vehicles using deep learning for perception. Both theory and industrial case studies will be discussed, with a special focus on the automotive domain. I will conclude with a brief discussion of the major remaining challenges posed by the use of machine learning and AI in CPS.</p>
2017-12-05 00:00:00Professor Sanjit A. Seshia (EECS, UC Berkeley)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2945Topics in International Technology Management Autumn 2017https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/topics-international-technology-management-autumn-2017-0
<p>Satellites provide data that play an increasing vital role in providing benefits to society. From entertainment and communications, to disaster relief and weather, among many other subjects, we are reliant on satellites for daily activities. The orbital environment from which these satellites can provide data is increasingly congested and volatile. There are currently over 20,000 pieces of debris larger than 10 cm in orbit, and millions that are greater than 1 cm. Each of these pieces of debris threaten and could potentially destroy satellite assets that provide benefits to humanity. In order to reduce the growing risk of space debris humanity must make efforts to (1) not add any more debris to orbit, and (2) remove the debris that already exists.</p>
<p>Astroscale, which is part of a growing ecosystem of venture space companies in Japan, is working on addressing both of these issues. Astroscale is one of only a few companies in the world developing technologies and building a business model with the goal of measuring and removing debris from orbit. With one mission to measure sub-millimeter debris scheduled to launch in November 2017, and another being planned for launch in 2019, Astroscale is moving rapidly toward the creation of a business that will remove debris from orbit and make the space environment safe and sustainable for future generations.</p>
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<p>US-ATMC 25th Anniversary Series of Public Seminars: Theme for 2017is "The Rise of Commercial Space Businesses in Asia"<br />Thursdays, 4:30 – 5:50 pm<br />October 5 – December 7, 2017</p>
<p>Distinguished guest speakers present new trends among firms from Asia or targeting Asia with businesses related to outer space, including telecommunications, space debris removal, payload launch services, space medicine, etc.</p>
2017-12-01 00:30:00Chris Blackerby (COO, ASTROSCALE)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2872SystemX Seminar: 5G Technology – From Research to Practicehttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/systemx-seminar-5g-technology-%25E2%2580%2593-research-practice
<p><span>Abstract Coming Soon</span></p>
2017-12-01 00:30:00Durga Prasad Malladi (Qualcomm)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2927lab64 workshop: Wrap uphttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/lab64-workshop-wrap
<p>Come learn your way around the electronics lab! This workshop is great for people new to electrical engineering (or non-EEs) to pick up some new skills!</p>
<p> </p>
2017-11-30 02:30:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2856EE380 Computer Systems Colloquium: NLV Agentshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/ee380-computer-systems-colloquium-nlv-agents
<p>While neural networks had been used in speech recognition in the early 1990s, they did not outperform the traditional machine learning approaches until 2010, when Alex's team members at Microsoft Research demonstrated the superiority of Deep Neural Networks (DNN) for large vocabulary speech recognition systems. The speech community rapidly adopted deep learning, followed by the image processing community, and many other disciplines. In this talk I will give an introduction to speech recognition, go over the fundamentals of deep learning, explained what it took for the speech recognition field to adopt deep learning, and how that has been contributed to popularize personal assistants like Siri.</p>
<hr /><p> </p>
<p>ABOUT THE COLLOQUIUM:</p>
<p>See the Colloquium website, http://ee380.stanford.edu, for scheduled speakers, FAQ, and additional information. Stanford and SCPD students can enroll in EE380 for one unit of credit. Anyone is welcome to attend; talks are webcast live and archived for on-demand viewing over the web.</p>
2017-11-30 00:30:00Tom Gruber (Apple Computer)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2887SCIEN Talk: Next Generation Wearable AR Display Technologieshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/scien-talk-next-generation-wearable-ar-display-technologies
<p>Wearable AR/VR displays have a long history and earlier efforts failed due to various limitations. Advances in sensors, optical technologies, and computing technologies renewed the interest in this area. Most people are convinced AR will be very big. A key question is whether AR glasses can be the new computing platform and replace smart phones? I'll discuss some of the challenges ahead. We have been working on various wearable display architectures and I'll discuss our efforts related to MEMS scanned beam displays, head-mounted projectors and smart telepresence screens, and holographic near-eye displays.</p>
2017-11-30 00:30:00Professor Hakan Urey (Koç University in Istanbul-Turkey; CY Vision in San Jose, CA)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2929Applied Physics/Physics Colloquium: Probing Cosmology with the Dark Energy Surveyhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/applied-physicsphysics-colloquium-probing-cosmology-dark-energy-survey
<p>I will overview the Dark Energy Survey (DES) project and highlight its early science results, focusing on the recently released cosmology results from the first year of the survey. The DES collaboration built the 570-megapixel Dark Energy Camera for the Blanco 4-meter telescope at NOAO's Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile to carry out a deep, wide-area, multi-band optical survey of several hundred million galaxies and a time-domain survey to discover several thousand supernovae. The survey started in Aug. 2013 and is now in its fifth observing season. DES was designed to address the questions: why is the expansion of the Universe speeding up? Is cosmic acceleration due to dark energy or does it require a modification of General Relativity? DES is addressing these questions by measuring the history of cosmic expansion and the growth of structure through multiple complementary techniques: galaxy clusters, the large-scale galaxy distribution, gravitational lensing, and supernovae, as well as through cross-correlation with other data sets. I will also discuss how the DES data are being used to make a variety of other astronomical discoveries, from the outer Solar System to ultra-faint dwarf galaxies to the kilonova counterpart of a binary neutron star gravitational-wave source.</p>
2017-11-29 00:15:00Josh Frieman (Fermilab)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2942SystemX Special Seminar: THz Wireless Communications: New Opportunities and Challengeshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/systemx-special-seminar-thz-wireless-communications-new-opportunities-and-challenges
<p>Ultra-broadband Millimeter (mm) and Terahertz (THz) wireless communication systems are expected to help satisfy the ever-growing need for smaller devices that can offer higher speed wireless communication anywhere and anytime. The large bandwidth paired with higher speed wireless links opens up the door to a large number of novel applications such as 1) ultra-high-speed cellular links, 2) wireless short range communications for ultra-high-speed data transfer, 3) secure wireless communication for military and defense applications, 4) on-body sensors for health monitoring systems. To enable future mm- and THz-range wireless communications for these different applications, it is imperative to understand propagation mechanisms and develop good channel models.</p>
<p>This talk compares propagation characteristics of three frequency bands: 30 GHz (26-40 GHz), 140 GHz (110-170 GHz) and 300 GHz (300-316 GHz), discusses propagation mechanisms that are prevalent at these frequencies and proposes techniques for modeling THz wireless channels.</p>
2017-11-28 21:00:00Professor Alenka Zajić (Georgia Institute of Technology)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2943Leveraging Electromagnetic Emanations for IoT Securityhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/leveraging-electromagnetic-emanations-iot-security
<p>The Internet of Things (IoT) has introduced new security risks for both consumers and<br />businesses. Mitigation of these risks is difficult in part because IoT devices often have limited<br />resources available for security monitoring, and limited hardware and system support for isolation<br />and protection. Unfortunately, existing malware detection techniques require significant<br />computation power and resources on the monitored device itself, making their deployment on IoT<br />devices challenging.<br />To address the problem of the increasing need for IOT malware detection on one side, and<br />severe difficulties in implementing such detection on the IOT devices themselves, this talk will<br />present a method for finding execution of malware on IoT devices that allows external detection<br />of malware on an IOT device without imposing any overhead, using any resources, and even<br />without physical contact with that IOT device. To achieve that, we use electromagnetic (EM)<br />emanations from the IOT device's computational components to characterize the normal<br />behavior of the software running on that device, and then monitor future EM emanations to detect<br />when the observed behavior significantly deviates from the previously learned normal behavior.<br />The talk will also present specialized antennas designed to pick up signals closed to the noise<br />floor, propagation characterization, modeling of communication link of side-channel signals, and<br />derivation of capacity bounds of the EM side-channel.</p>
2017-11-28 00:15:00Professor Alenka Zajić (Georgia Institute of Technology)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2941Classes resume - Welcome Back!https://ee.stanford.edu/event/general/classes-resume-welcome-back
<p>See you around Packard!</p>
2017-11-27 16:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2930Thanksgiving Recess - no classeshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/thanksgiving-recess-no-classes
<p>Enjoy Thanksgiving Break!</p>
2017-11-20 16:00:00 to 2017-11-25 01:30:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2922lab64 - open lab / office hourshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/lab64-open-lab-office-hours-2
<p><strong>From <a href="http://www.rabbitholevr.org/" target="_blank">Rabbit Hole VR Club</a>:</strong> Tutorials and instructional office hours will be held during Fall quarter for students who are interested in XR but don't have much experience. There will be weekly office hours (Sundays 5 - 6 p.m., lab64) with an experienced core member who will help with weekly assignments starting week 3. The content covered, courtesy of Udacity, is listed below:<br />​<br />Introduction to Virtual Reality<br />VR Scenes and Objects<br />VR Software Development</p>
<p>​The pacing of the content will be about 2-3 hours per week. The timeline for these unofficial assignments are listed below.</p>
<p>By week 3: Finish Introduction to Virtual Reality<br />By week 4: Finish Animations in Scenes and Objects<br />By week 5: Finish Scenes and Objects<br />By week 6: Finish Controlling Objects Using Code in Software Development<br />By week 7: Finish Programming Animations in Software Development<br />By week 8: Finish Software Development<br />​<br />Basic programming experience is highly recommended. An experience level of having completed CS 106A will suffice for most of the topics covered, and an experience level of having completed CS 106B/X is ideal</p>
2017-11-20 01:00:00 to 2017-11-20 02:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2901lab64 workshop: Antenna Design, 3 sessionshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/lab64-workshop-antenna-design-3-sessions-1
<p><strong>Antenna Design Workshop</strong><br />Thursdays 7:30-9:30 PM<br />Three Sessions - 11/2, 11/9, and 11/16</p>
<ul><li>No experience required!</li>
<li>Learn to design and predict antenna performance</li>
<li>Import 3D models</li>
<li>Learn to use CST for modeling and simulation</li>
<li>Build and test YOUR OWN antenna</li>
</ul>2017-11-17 03:30:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2891VR/AR Community presents &#039;Privacy and VR&#039;https://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/vrar-community-presents-privacy-and-vr
<p>With widespread adoption of VR, what data could we collect about users, and what can we then extrapolate from that data? Where's the line between reasonable and unreasonable knowledge? This talk will cover potential risks and concerns about Privacy and VR and offer suggestions for developers and users.</p>
2017-11-17 03:00:00Suzanne Leibrick (Intel RealSense Technologies)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2903Topics in International Technology Management Autumn 2017https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/topics-international-technology-management-autumn-2017-1
<p>US-ATMC 25th Anniversary Series of Public Seminars: Theme for 2017is "The Rise of Commercial Space Businesses in Asia"<br />Thursdays, 4:30 – 5:50 pm<br />October 5 – December 7, 2017</p>
<p>Distinguished guest speakers present new trends among firms from Asia or targeting Asia with businesses related to outer space, including telecommunications, space debris removal, payload launch services, space medicine, etc.</p>
2017-11-17 00:30:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2871SystemX Seminar: Efficient battery usage for wireless IoT nodeshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/general/systemx-seminar-efficient-battery-usage-wireless-iot-nodes
<p>The prediction of the life-time of battery-powered IoT devices and wireless sensor networks is almost exclusively based on the assumption that the total charge in a battery (i.e. the mA-h) can be linearly consumed in time. This is not the case in reality. Batteries are complex electro-chemical systems and their discharge behavior depends heavily on the timing and intensity of the applied load. There is very little empirical data or reliable models available for these kinds of batteries and loads that are typically used in IoT sensor nodes for very long operational time, 5 -10 years.</p>
<p>We characterize the inexpensive CR2032 Li-coin cells using carefully controlled synthetic loads and a wide range of IoT-typical load parameters. We observe that actual lifetimes can differ from predicted linear ones by almost a factor of three. Furthermore, loads with similar average currents can vary significantly in the amount of capacity of the battery they can utilize. We conclude that short duration loads generally are faring better than sustained loads which was not anticipated. We suggest a better prediction model, that captures the non-linear short duration behavior, which can be implemented in constrained IoT devices.</p>
2017-11-17 00:30:00Professor Per Gunningberg (Uppsala University)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2926SmartGrid Seminar welcomes Saurabh Aminhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/smartgrid-seminar-welcomes-saurabh-amin
<p>The seminars are scheduled for 1:30 pm on the dates listed above. The speakers are renowned scholars or industry experts in power and energy systems. We believe they will bring novel insights and fruitful discussions<br />to Stanford. This seminar is offered as a 1 unit seminar course, CEE 272T/EE292T. Interested students can take this seminar course for credit by completing a project based on the topics presented in this course.</p>
2017-11-16 21:30:00Saurabh Amin (MIT)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2913lab64 workshop: Intro to Debugginghttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/lab64-workshop-intro-debugging
<p>Come learn your way around the electronics lab! This workshop is great for people new to electrical engineering (or non-EEs) to pick up some new skills!</p>
<p> </p>
2017-11-16 02:30:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2855lab64 workshop: Circuits, Devices, and Debugging!https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/lab64-workshop-circuits-devices-and-debugging
<p>Come learn about circuits and devices from Ron Quan! Ron is an expert in many things, including analog circuits, audio and video applications, and RF circuits.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>WHAT IS lab64?</strong> We're a community-oriented makerspace designed to give students a free place to work on electronics projects outside the realm of traditional research labs. Our workshops, assistants, and tools are here to support a variety of project and skill levels. <em>Everyone is welcome!</em></p>
2017-11-16 02:15:00Ron Quan (Stanford)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2934SCIEN Talk: Near-Eye Varifocal Augmented Reality Displayshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/scien-talk-near-eye-varifocal-augmented-reality-displays
<p>With the goal of registering dynamic synthetic imagery onto the real world, Ivan Sutherland envisioned a fundamental idea to combine digital displays with conventional optical components in a wearable fashion. Since then, various new advancements in the display engineering domain, and a broader understanding in the vision science domain have led us to computational displays for virtual reality and augmented reality applications. Today, such displays promise a more realistic and comfortable experience through techniques such as lightfield displays, holographic displays, always-in-focus displays, multiplane displays, and varifocal displays. In this talk, as an Nvidian, I will be presenting our new optical layouts for see-through computational near-eye displays that is simple, compact, varifocal, and provides a wide field of view with clear peripheral vision and large eyebox. Key to our efforts so far contain novel see-through rear-projection holographic screens, and deformable mirror membranes. We establish fundamental trade-offs between the quantitative parameters of resolution, field of view, and the form-factor of our designs; opening an intriguing avenue for future work on accommodation-supporting augmented reality display.</p>
2017-11-16 00:30:00Dr. Kaan Aksit (NVIDIA)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2928Applied Physics/Physics Colloquium: Recent results on Gravitational Waves from LIGO and Virgohttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/applied-physicsphysics-colloquium-recent-results-gravitational-waves-ligo-and-virgo
<p>Over the last two years, the Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo detectors have observed a handful of gravitational-wave events from the inspiral and merger of binary black holes in distant galaxies. These events have resulted in the first measurements of the fundamental properties of gravitational waves, tests of General Relativity in the strong-field, highly-dynamical regime, and the population, masses and spins of black holes in the universe. Most recently, signals were detected from the inspiral of a binary neutron star system, GW170817. That event is thus far the loudest (highest signal-to-noise ratio) and closest gravitational-wave event observed. A gamma-ray burst detected 1.7 seconds after merger confirms the long-held hypothesis that BNS mergers are associated with short gamma-ray bursts. The LIGO and Virgo data produced a three-dimensional sky localization of the source, enabling a successful electromagnetic follow-up campaign that identified an associated electromagnetic transient in a galaxy ~40 Mpc from Earth. A multi-messenger view of GW170817 from ~100 seconds before merger through weeks afterward provides evidence of a "kilonova", and of the production of heavy elements. For the first time, using gravitational waves we are able to constrain the equation of state of dense neutron stars and infer the rate of local binary neutron star mergers. When we include EM observations, we are able to directly measure the speed of gravitational waves, constrain its polarization content, independently measure the Hubble constant, probe the validity of the equivalence principle, and gain new insight into the astrophysical engine driving these events.</p>
2017-11-15 00:30:00Alan Weinstein (Caltech)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2933SystemX Alliance Fall Conference - Nov 14-16https://ee.stanford.edu/event/general/systemx-alliance-fall-conference-nov-14-16
<p><strong>Tuesday, Nov 14 (Day 1)</strong> - starts with a SystemX overview given by Prof. Boris Murmann and Prof. Philip Wong, SystemX's faculty directors. This will be followed by overviews of our Focus Areas by their respective faculty leaders. Breakout sessions for the Bio Interfaces and Design Productivity Focus Areas will follow in the afternoon. The day concludes with an FMA student poster session / industry mixer, reception from 4:30 -6:00 pm.</p>
<p><strong>Wednesday, Nov 15 (Day 2)</strong> - begins with topical presentations on research into Machine Learning at Stanford. The intention is to be well rounded, and present the challenges as well as the opportunities to be found in ML. The afternoon will hold three breakout sessions for the Computation for Data Analytics, for the Heterogeneous Integration, and for the Photonic &amp; Quantum Technologies Focus Areas, after which member company representatives will assemble for our Business Meeting. The day concludes with the SystemX Dinner also at the Li Ka Shing Center.</p>
<p>Our featured speaker at dinner will be Dr. Wally Rhines, President &amp; CEO of Mentor Graphics, a Siemens business</p>
<p><strong>Thursday, Nov 16 (Day 3)</strong> - will hold two breakout sessions in the morning for the Energy/Power Management Systems, as well as, the Internet of Everything Focus Areas. This final day will end at noon.</p>
<p>On Tues and Wed, the conference will be held at the Li Ka Shing Center. The Thursday morning sessions will be held in the Allen buildings. Please consult the preliminary agenda for more details.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p><a href="https://systemx.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/uploads/Archive/2017/Preliminary%202017%20Fall%20SystemX%20Conf.pdf" target="_blank">PRELIMINARY SYSTEMX NOVEMBER CONFERENCE AGENDA</a></p>
<p><a href="https://systemx.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/uploads/Archive/2017/2017%20Nov%20Conf%20Galvez%20Parking%20Instructions%20WEBSITE.pdf" target="_blank">PARKING INSTRUCTIONS FOR GALVEZ LOT</a></p>
<p><a href="https://systemx.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/uploads/Archive/2017/2017%20Nov%20Conf%20Parking%20Map%20WEBSITE.pdf" target="_blank">PARKING AND CONFERENCE MAP</a></p>
2017-11-14 08:00:00 to 2017-11-16 08:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2874lab64 - open lab / office hourshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/lab64-open-lab-office-hours-1
<p><strong>From <a href="http://www.rabbitholevr.org/" target="_blank">Rabbit Hole VR Club</a>:</strong> Tutorials and instructional office hours will be held during Fall quarter for students who are interested in XR but don't have much experience. There will be weekly office hours (Sundays 5 - 6 p.m., lab64) with an experienced core member who will help with weekly assignments starting week 3. The content covered, courtesy of Udacity, is listed below:<br />​<br />Introduction to Virtual Reality<br />VR Scenes and Objects<br />VR Software Development</p>
<p>​The pacing of the content will be about 2-3 hours per week. The timeline for these unofficial assignments are listed below.</p>
<p>By week 3: Finish Introduction to Virtual Reality<br />By week 4: Finish Animations in Scenes and Objects<br />By week 5: Finish Scenes and Objects<br />By week 6: Finish Controlling Objects Using Code in Software Development<br />By week 7: Finish Programming Animations in Software Development<br />By week 8: Finish Software Development<br />​<br />Basic programming experience is highly recommended. An experience level of having completed CS 106A will suffice for most of the topics covered, and an experience level of having completed CS 106B/X is ideal</p>
2017-11-13 01:00:00 to 2017-11-13 02:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2900VR/AR Community Social Mixerhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/vrar-community-social-mixer
<p>Join Rabbit Hole VR student club for fun and boba – please RSVP!</p>
2017-11-11 00:45:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2924IT Forum: Tight regret bounds for a latent variable model of recommendation systemshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/it-forum-tight-regret-bounds-latent-variable-model-recommendation-systems
<p>We consider an online model for recommendation systems, with each user being recommended an item at each time-step and providing 'like' or 'dislike' feedback. A latent variable model specifies the user preferences: both users and items are clustered into types. The model captures structure in both the item and user spaces, and our focus is on simultaneous use of both structures. We analyze the situation in which the type preference matrix has i.i.d. entries. Our analysis elucidates the system operating regimes in which existing algorithms are nearly optimal, as well as highlighting the sub-optimality of using only one of item or user structure (as is done in commonly used item-item and user-user collaborative filtering). This prompts a new algorithm that is nearly optimal in essentially all parameter regimes.</p>
<p><em>Joint work with Prof. Guy Bresler.</em></p>
2017-11-10 21:15:00Mina Karzand (Postdoctoral Researcher, MIT)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2923Topics in Itnt&#039;l Tech Mgmt, Satellite Enabled IoT Connectivityhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/topics-itntl-tech-mgmt-satellite-enabled-iot-connectivity
<p>Fleet Space Technologies, an Australian space startup company, is building a network of nanosatellites to deliver a global backhaul service for the Internet of Things. This service will enable the integration of devices in out-of-the-way places -- remote mines, ocean-going vessels, commercial forests, etc. -- into the world of cloud computing. </p>
<p>US-ATMC 25th Anniversary Series of Public Seminars: Theme for 2017is "The Rise of Commercial Space Businesses in Asia"<br />Thursdays, 4:30 – 5:50 pm<br />October 5 – December 7, 2017</p>
<p>Distinguished guest speakers present new trends among firms from Asia or targeting Asia with businesses related to outer space, including telecommunications, space debris removal, payload launch services, space medicine, etc.</p>
2017-11-10 00:30:00Flavia Tata Nardini (CEO, Fleet Space Technologies)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2870SystemX Seminar: Reconfigurable platforms, the thirst for bandwidth, and the future of computinghttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/systemx-seminar-reconfigurable-platforms-thirst-bandwidth-and-future-computing
<p>Today, designers of specialized systems are increasingly tantalized by the enormous energy efficiency of custom silicon solutions...but are just as turned off by the spiraling costs of building and verifying those very chips. Enter the FPGA, a reconfigurable substrate that would be the absolutely perfect solution were it not for two common conventional wisdoms: they're impossible to build, and impossible to use. In this talk we will discuss the motivation and context of FPGAs, notably from the perspective of IO circuits, and what interesting problems and solutions they pose to designers and users.</p>
2017-11-10 00:30:00Ron Ho, (Intel (Altera))https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2917ISL Colloquium: Delay, memory, and messaging tradeoffs in a distributed service systemhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/isl-colloquium-delay-memory-and-messaging-tradeoffs-distributed-service-system
<p>We consider the classical supermarket model: jobs arrive as a Poisson process of rate of lambda N, with 0 &lt; lambda &lt; 1, and are to be routed to one of N identical servers with unit mean, exponentially distributed processing times. We review a variety of policies and architectures that have been considered in the literature, and which differ in terms of the direction and number of messages that are exchanged, and the memory that they employ; for example, the "power-of-d-choices" or pull-based policies. In order to compare policies of this kind, we focus on the resources (memory and messaging) that they use, and on whether the expected delay of a typical vanishes as N increases.<br />We show that if (i) the message rate increases superlinearly, or (ii) the memory size increases superlogarithmically, as a function of N, then there exists a policy that drives the delay to zero, and we outline an analysis using fluid models. On the other hand, if neither condition (i) or (ii) holds, then no policy within a broad class of symmetric policies can yield vanishing delay.</p>
2017-11-10 00:15:00Professor John Tsitsiklis (MIT)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2921SmartGrid Seminar: Emerging Technologies and Their Impact on the Gridhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/smartgrid-seminar-emerging-technologies-and-their-impact-grid
<p>As rooftop solar, electric vehicles, and residential battery storage continue to become more and more commonplace, they can have significant impacts in the way the Energy Grid operates. By embracing these new technologies, PG&amp;E is helping to create a vision for what a next generation energy company will look like and seeking to answer key questions such as: Is energy storage changing the way in which utilities operate the grid? What is needed for new technologies, such as residential battery energy storage, to go mainstream? What are some of the key factors driving the inevitable transition from a one-way grid to a two-way grid?</p>
<p>This presentation will focus on both the technology changes happening to the energy space as well as some of the technology advancements helping to reshape how the energy grid engages with these changes. It will cover these topics while exploring a case study of a recent pilot projects where PG&amp;E, Tesla, GE &amp; Green Charge teamed up on a project in San Jose to demonstrate how battery storage and rooftop solar connected to smart inverters can be used to support the electric grid during periods of high demand while providing participating residents and businesses with backup power and bill reduction. The project is a microcosm of what the grid will look like in the near future with the rapid adoption of distributed energy resources such as solar, battery storage &amp; EVs.</p>
<hr /><p> </p>
<p>The seminars are scheduled for 1:30 pm on the dates listed above. The speakers are renowned scholars or industry experts in power and energy systems. We believe they will bring novel insights and fruitful discussions<br />to Stanford. This seminar is offered as a 1 unit seminar course, CEE 272T/EE292T. Interested students can take this seminar course for credit by completing a project based on the topics presented in this course.</p>
2017-11-09 21:30:00Scott Tom Martin (PG&amp;E)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2911lab64 workshop: Intro to Solderinghttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/lab64-workshop-intro-soldering
<p>Come learn your way around the electronics lab! This workshop is great for people new to electrical engineering (or non-EEs) to pick up some new skills!</p>
<p> </p>
2017-11-09 02:30:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2854EE380 Computer Systems Colloquium: Enabling NLP, Machine Learning, and Few-Shot Learning using Associative Processinghttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/ee380-computer-systems-colloquium-enabling-nlp-machine-learning-and-few-shot-learning
<p>This presentation details a fully programmable, associative, content-based, compute in-memory architecture that changes the concept of computing from serial data processing--where data is moved back and forth between the processor and memory--to massive parallel data processing, compute, and search directly in-place.</p>
<p>This associative processing unit (APU) can be used in many machine learning applications, one-shot/few-shot learning, convolutional neural networks, recommender systems and data mining tasks such as prediction, classification, and clustering.</p>
<p>Additionally, the architecture is well-suited to processing large corpora and can be applied to Question Answering (QA) and various NLP tasks such as language translation. The architecture can embed long documents and compute in-place any type of memory network and answer complex questions in O(1).</p>
2017-11-09 00:30:00Avidan Akerib (VP of Associative Computing Business Unit GSI Technologies)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2919SCIEN &amp; EE292E seminar: Interactive 3D Digital Humanshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/scien-ee292e-seminar-interactive-3d-digital-humans
<p>This talk will cover recent methods for recording and displaying interactive life-sized digital humans using the ICT Light Stage, natural language interfaces, and automultiscopic 3D displays. We will then discuss the ﬁrst full application of this technology to preserve the experience of in-person interactions with Holocaust survivors</p>
<p>More Information: <a href="http://gl.ict.usc.edu/Research/TimeOffsetConversations/" target="_blank">http://gl.ict.usc.edu/Research/TimeOffsetConversations/</a></p>
<hr /><p>The SCIEN Colloquia are open to the public. The talks are also videotaped and posted the following week on talks.stanford.edu.</p>
<p>There will a reception following the presentation.</p>
2017-11-09 00:30:00 Dr. Andrew Jones (USC)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2920Applied Physics/Physics Colloquium: Physics in the Futurehttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/applied-physicsphysics-colloquium-physics-future
<p>The greatest American philosopher of the 20th century and Hall of Fame Yankee baseball catcher, Yogi Berra, wisely noted, "It's hard to make predictions, especially about the future." Yogi Berra also warned, "If you don't know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else."</p>
<p>What excites physicists more than anything else are the unexpected discoveries that will open new horizons of the endless frontiers of science. The talk will sketch a few selected areas and offer a personal view of how physicists can position themselves to become lucky enough to stumble onto discoveries that lead us "someplace else."</p>
<hr /><p> </p>
<p>APPLIED PHYSICS/PHYSICS COLLOQUIUM is held Tuesdays at 4:30 pm in the William R. Hewlett Teaching Center, room 200 (see map). Refreshments in the lobby of Varian Physics at 4:15 pm.</p>
<p>Autumn 2017/2018, Committee: Roger Blandford (Chair), Aharon Kapitulnik, Bob Laughlin, Leonardo Senatore</p>
2017-11-08 00:15:00Steve Chu (Stanford)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2821 A New Class of Memory &amp; Storage Technology: 3D XPoint™ and Optane™ Technology Overviewhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/new-class-memory-storage-technology-3d-xpoint%25E2%2584%25A2-and-optane%25E2%2584%25A2-technology-overview
<p>3D XPoint™ memory, the first new memory to ship in volume in decades, features the combination of DRAM and NAND attributes of: high memory density (NAND-like capacity); high performance (closer to DRAM performance); and non-volatility. The arrival of 3D XPoint™ memory – offering the full promise of a storage class memory – has the potential to fundamentally change the memory-storage hierarchy at the hardware, system software, and application levels. This memory is currently available as an Intel® Optane™ SSD with access times as fast as the rest of the system; a departure from classical storage technologies. System changes to match the low latency of these SSDs are already advanced, and in many cases they enable the application to utilize all the Optane SSD's performance. The implications of this new memory on computing are significant, with applications taking advantage of this new technology as storage as the first to benefit. Applications such as key–value stores and real-time analytics can benefit immediately both in terms of faster runtimes and also access to larger data sets through application or OS-based paging. To best measure this high performance SSD we borrow memory performance measurement techniques and apply them to storage. The next step in this convergence of memory and storage will be 3D XPoint memory accessed through processor load/store operations on DIMM busses.</p>
2017-11-08 00:00:00Al Fazio &amp; Frank Hadyhttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/2918Rising Stars Workshop for Womenhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/department/rising-stars-workshop-women
<p>Rising Stars is a career-building workshop for women electrical and computer engineers and computer scientists interested in careers in academia. The workshop brings together the best and brightest female graduates in the fields of electrical and computer engineering and computer science for two days of scientific interactions, career-oriented discussions, and networking. Stanford is proud to host the 2017 Rising Stars workshop and looks forward to welcoming you to the Farm.</p>
2017-11-06 02:30:00 to 2017-11-08 01:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2395lab64 - open lab / office hourshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/lab64-open-lab-office-hours-0
<p>From <strong><a href="http://www.rabbitholevr.org/" target="_blank">Rabbit Hole VR Club</a></strong>: Tutorials and instructional office hours will be held during Fall quarter for students who are interested in XR but don't have much experience. There will be weekly office hours (Sundays 5 - 6 p.m., lab64) with an experienced core member who will help with weekly assignments starting week 3. The content covered, courtesy of Udacity, is listed below:<br />​<br />Introduction to Virtual Reality<br />VR Scenes and Objects<br />VR Software Development</p>
<p>​The pacing of the content will be about 2-3 hours per week. The timeline for these unofficial assignments are listed below.</p>
<p>By week 3: Finish Introduction to Virtual Reality<br />By week 4: Finish Animations in Scenes and Objects<br />By week 5: Finish Scenes and Objects<br />By week 6: Finish Controlling Objects Using Code in Software Development<br />By week 7: Finish Programming Animations in Software Development<br />By week 8: Finish Software Development<br />​<br />Basic programming experience is highly recommended. An experience level of having completed CS 106A will suffice for most of the topics covered, and an experience level of having completed CS 106B/X is ideal</p>
2017-11-06 01:00:00 to 2017-11-06 02:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2899Special Seminar: Topological Energy Transductionhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/special-seminar-topological-energy-transduction
<p>Within the CMOS architecture, the interconnected devices may either be categorized as an "active" device, which produces energy in the form of a current or a voltage, or a "passive" device, which stores or maintains energy in the form of a current or voltage. The societal demand for smaller sized electronic devices, such as computers and cellular phones, with improved functionality has forced not only the sizes of the constituent components of CMOS information processing technology to rapidly shrink, but for the operational frequencies to increase. While it has been possible to reduce the size of active CMOS devices, passive devices have not seen the same reduction in size. Of the passive devices (e.g. resistors, capacitors and inductors) used in CMOS technologies, the circuit element that consumes the most area on a circuit board while simultaneously finding the least success in miniaturization is the inductor. In this talk, we will present a novel method for energy transduction that utilizes the interplay between magnetism and topology on the surface of newly discovered materials, referred to as time-reversal invariant topological insulators, to create a paradigmatically different inductor. Using a novel self-consistent simulation that couples AC non-equilibrium Green functions to fully electrodynamic solutions of Maxwell's equations, we demonstrate excellent inductance densities up to terahertz frequencies thereby providing a potential solution to an eminent grand challenge.</p>
2017-11-03 19:00:00Prof. Matthew J. Gilbert (Univ. of Illinois, Urbana)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2915VR/AR Community presents &#039;Designing Multi-Person Immersive Experiences&#039;https://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/vrar-community-presents-designing-multi-person-immersive-experiences
<p>Immersive interfaces have the potential to enable powerful human-to-human interactions by creating shared spaces. Learn best practices for designing VR and AR experiences around communal interactions to enable collaboration, communication and co-presence. By also considering asymmetric experiences that take place across heterogeneous devices like a headset and a mobile phone, designers can open up new opportunities for participation. Mechanics built around asynchronous interactions can make small communities feel bigger.</p>
<p>This session will discuss findings from dozens of social interaction tests and highlight best practices towards designing fantastic multi-person immersive experiences.</p>
2017-11-03 02:00:00Daniel Citron (Designer @ Google VR)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2902Topics in International Technology Management Autumn 2017https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/topics-international-technology-management-autumn-2017
<p>US-ATMC 25th Anniversary Series of Public Seminars: Theme for 2017is "The Rise of Commercial Space Businesses in Asia"<br />Thursdays, 4:30 – 5:50 pm<br />October 5 – December 7, 2017</p>
<p>Distinguished guest speakers present new trends among firms from Asia or targeting Asia with businesses related to outer space, including telecommunications, space debris removal, payload launch services, space medicine, etc.</p>
2017-11-02 23:30:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2869SystemX Seminar: Efficient Machine Learning Hardware Design: From High-Throughput Computer Vision to Ultra-Low-Power Biomedical Applicationshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/systemx-seminar-efficient-machine-learning-hardware-design-high-throughput-computer
<p>In recent years, deep learning algorithms have been widespread across many practical applications. Algorithms trained by offline back propagation using pre-defined datasets show impressive performance, but state-of-the-art algorithms are compute-/memory-intensive, making it difficult to perform low-power real-time classification, especially on area-/power-constrained embedded hardware platforms.</p>
<p>In this talk, we present our recent research on how hardware designs of machine learning algorithms are efficiently customized for two divergent applications. These include deep convolutional neural networks (VGG, ResNet) for high-throughput image/video applications (e.g. autonomous driving), and compressed neural networks for ECG-based ultra-low-power biomedical applications (e.g. wearable devices). Our FPGA and ASIC prototype designs are presented that improve the energy-efficiency by optimizing computation, memory, and communication for representative neural networks.</p>
2017-11-02 23:30:00Jae-sun Seo (Arizona State University)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2904SmartGrid Seminar: Optimization, Inference and Learning for District-Energy Systemshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/smartgrid-seminar-optimization-inference-and-learning-district-energy-systems
<p>We discuss how Optimization, Inference and Learning (OIL) methodology is expected to re-shape future demand-response technologies acting across interdependent energy, i.e. power, natural gas andheating/cooling, infrastructures at the district/metropolitan/distribution level. We describe hierarchy ofdeterministic and stochastic planning and operational problems emerging in the context of physical flows over networks associated with the laws of electricity, gas-, fluid- and heat-mechanics. We proceed to illustratedevelopment and challenges of the physics-informed OIL methodology on examples of: a) Graphical Models approach applied to a broad spectrum of the energy flow problems, including online reconstruction of the grid(s) topology from measurements; b) Direct and inverse dynamical problems for timely delivery of services in the district heating/cooling systems; c) Ensemble Control of the phase-space cycling energy loads via Markov Decision Process (MDP) and related reinforcement learning approaches.</p>
2017-11-02 20:30:00Misha Chertkov (Los Alamos National Laboratory)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2912lab64 workshop: Antenna Design, 3 sessionshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/lab64-workshop-antenna-design-3-sessions
<p><strong>Antenna Design Workshop</strong><br />Thursdays 7:30-9:30 PM<br />Three Sessions - 11/2, 11/9, and 11/16</p>
<ul><li>No experience required!</li>
<li>Learn to design and predict antenna performance</li>
<li>Import 3D models</li>
<li>Learn to use CST for modeling and simulation</li>
<li>Build and test YOUR OWN antenna</li>
</ul>2017-11-02 14:30:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2889lab64 workshop: Intro to Arduino – Analog/PWMhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/lab64-workshop-intro-arduino-%25E2%2580%2593-analogpwm
<p>Come learn your way around the electronics lab! This workshop is great for people new to electrical engineering (or non-EEs) to pick up some new skills!</p>
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2017-11-02 01:30:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2853EE380 Computer Systems Colloquium: Partisan Gerrymandering and the Supreme Court: The Role of Social Sciencehttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/ee380-computer-systems-colloquium-partisan-gerrymandering-and-supreme-court-role
<p>The U.S. Supreme Court is considering a case this term, Gill v Whitford, that might lead to the first constitutional constraints on partisanship in redistricting. Eric McGhee is the inventor of the efficiency gap, a measure of gerrymandering that the court is considering in the case. He will describe the case's legal background, discuss some of the metrics that have been proposed for measuring gerrymandering, and reflect on the role of social science in the litigation.</p>
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<p>ABOUT THE COLLOQUIUM:</p>
<p>See the Colloquium website, http://ee380.stanford.edu, for scheduled speakers, FAQ, and additional information. Stanford and SCPD students can enroll in EE380 for one unit of credit. Anyone is welcome to attend; talks are webcast live and archived for on-demand viewing over the web.</p>
2017-11-01 23:30:00Eric McGhee (Public Policy Institute, UC Berkeley)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2886SCIEN Talk: Mapping molecular orientation using polarized light microscopyhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/scien-talk-mapping-molecular-orientation-using-polarized-light-microscopy
<p>Polarization is a basic property of light, but the human eye is not sensitive to it. Therefore, we don't have an intuitive understanding of polarization and of optical phenomena that are based on it. They either elude us, like the polarization of the blue sky or the rainbow, or they puzzle us, like the effect of Polaroid sunglasses. Meanwhile, polarized light plays an important role in nature and can be used to manipulate and analyze molecular order in materials, including living cells, tissues, and whole organisms, by observation with the polarized light microscope.</p>
<p>In this seminar, Rudolf Oldenbourg will first illustrate the nature of polarized light and its interaction with aligned materials using hands-on demonstrations. He will then introduce a modern version of the polarized light microscope, the LC-PolScope, created at the MBL. Enhanced by liquid crystal devices, electronic imaging, and digital image processing techniques, the LC-PolScope reveals and measures the orientation of molecules in every resolved specimen point at once. In recent years, his lab expanded the LC-PolScope technique to include the measurement of polarized fluorescence of GFP and other fluorescent molecules, and applied it to record the remarkable choreography of septin proteins during cell division, displayed in yeast to mammalian cells.</p>
<p>Talon Chandler will then discuss extending polarized light techniques to multi-view microscopes, including light sheet and light field microscopes. In contrast to traditional, single-view microscopy, the recording of specimen images along two or more viewing directions allows us to unambiguously measure the three dimensional orientation of molecules and their aggregates. Chandler will discuss ongoing work on optimizing the design and reconstruction algorithms for multi-view polarized light microscopy.</p>
<hr /><p>The SCIEN Colloquia are open to the public. The talks are also videotaped and posted the following week on talks.stanford.edu.</p>
<p>There will a reception following the presentation.</p>
2017-11-01 23:30:00Prof. Rudolf Oldenbourg; Talon Chandler (Marine Biological Laboratory)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2905Applied Physics/Physics Colloquium: Quantum Simulations and Tensor Networks in Condensed Matter and High Energy Physicshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/applied-physicsphysics-colloquium-quantum-simulations-and-tensor-networks-condensed
<p> 2017-10-26<span>Many-body quantum systems are very hard to describe, since the number of parameters required to describe them grows exponentially with the number of particles, volume, etc. This problem appears in different areas of science, and several methods have been developed in fields of quantum chemistry, condensed matter and high energy physics in order to circumvent it in certain situations. In the last years, other approaches inspired by quantum information theory have been introduced in order to address such a problem. On the one hand, quantum simulation uses a different system in order to emulate the behavior of the problem under study. On the other, tensor networks aim at the accurate description of many-body quantum states with few parameters. In this talk, I will give a basic introduction to those approaches, and explain current efforts to use them in order to attack both condensed and high-energy physics problems.</span></p>
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<p>APPLIED PHYSICS/PHYSICS COLLOQUIUM is held Tuesdays at 4:30 pm in the William R. Hewlett Teaching Center, room 200 (see map). Refreshments in the lobby of Varian Physics at 4:15 pm.</p>
<p>Autumn 2017/2018, Committee: Roger Blandford (Chair), Aharon Kapitulnik, Bob Laughlin, Leonardo Senatore</p>
2017-10-31 23:15:00Ignacio Cirac (Hanna Visiting Scholar, Max Planck Institute)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2820lab64 workshop: Mechanical How-To Session 4https://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/lab64-workshop-mechanical-how-session-4
<p>MECHANICAL HOW-TO FALL QUARTER SESSIONS</p>
<p>This should be tons of fun and save lots of time and effort when you go to work on your projects.</p>
<p>This is Session 4; there will be 6 -7 sessions in all and we hope to get as far as building a simple robotic arm. You can attend any or all of these workshops</p>
2017-10-31 02:30:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2906lab64 - open lab / office hourshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/lab64-open-lab-office-hours
<p><strong>From <a href="http://www.rabbitholevr.org/" target="_blank">Rabbit Hole VR Club</a>:</strong> Tutorials and instructional office hours will be held during Fall quarter for students who are interested in XR but don't have much experience. There will be weekly office hours (Sundays 5 - 6 p.m., lab64) with an experienced core member who will help with weekly assignments starting week 3. The content covered, courtesy of Udacity, is listed below:<br />​<br />Introduction to Virtual Reality<br />VR Scenes and Objects<br />VR Software Development</p>
<p>​The pacing of the content will be about 2-3 hours per week. The timeline for these unofficial assignments are listed below.</p>
<p>By week 3: Finish Introduction to Virtual Reality<br />By week 4: Finish Animations in Scenes and Objects<br />By week 5: Finish Scenes and Objects<br />By week 6: Finish Controlling Objects Using Code in Software Development<br />By week 7: Finish Programming Animations in Software Development<br />By week 8: Finish Software Development<br />​<br />Basic programming experience is highly recommended. An experience level of having completed CS 106A will suffice for most of the topics covered, and an experience level of having completed CS 106B/X is ideal.</p>
2017-10-30 00:00:00 to 2017-10-30 01:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2898EE&#039;s Annual Pumpkin Carving Contest 2017https://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/ees-annual-pumpkin-carving-contest-2017
<p>Come together with your EE friends/labmates/coworkers to craft the best pumpkin!</p>
<p>Our annual event brings together the EE community in a friendly forum to carve the best Halloween Pumpkin.</p>
<p><strong>Note: Signup ends Sunday, October 22.</strong></p>
2017-10-27 19:30:00 to 2017-10-27 20:30:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2834VR/AR Community presents &#039;The Design Language of Mixed Reality&#039;https://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/vrar-community-presents-design-language-mixed-reality
<p>The Microsoft HoloLens, the first fully untethered holographic Windows computer, brings with it a new wave of holographic development. What are the challenges of Mixed Reality? What kind of apps make sense and work well? Tobiah Zarlez from Microsoft will answer these questions and more, covering the basics of the HoloLens, how it works, and how you can start developing holographic applications today.<em><br /></em></p>
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2017-10-27 02:00:00Tobiah Zarlez (Microsoft HoloLens)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2897SystemX Seminar Networks and Mobilityhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/systemx-seminar-networks-and-mobility
<p>Enterprise access networks are going through a fundamental shift away from fixed, desk-centric networking to a mobile-first network architecture. The drivers for such a shift are obvious in our reliance on mobile devices for our daily tasks. In this discussion, we will focus on the unique use cases that are influencing the evolution of enterprise mobility including location-based services. Newer use cases around the intersection of mobility and IOT are also changing how we think of enabling and securing enterprise networks. Traditional policy-based models no longer suffice and need to be augmented with machine learning and AI based models of security. The same ideas are also being applied for proactive service assurance for mission-critical applications – critical in a SaaS-based solution that delivers the network as a service. We will discuss these and many other topics related to mobility in the enterprise.</p>
2017-10-26 23:30:00Keerti Melkote (Aruba Networks, a Division of HPE)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2806Mars Shot: India Reshaping the Global Space Landscapehttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/mars-shot-india-reshaping-global-space-landscape
<p>US-ATMC 25th Anniversary Series of Public Seminars: Theme for 2017is "The Rise of Commercial Space Businesses in Asia"<br />Thursdays, 4:30 – 5:50 pm<br />October 5 – December 7, 2017</p>
<p>Distinguished guest speakers present new trends among firms from Asia or targeting Asia with businesses related to outer space, including telecommunications, space debris removal, payload launch services, space medicine, etc.</p>
2017-10-26 23:30:00Susmita Mohanty (CEO, Earth2Orbit)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2868lab64 workshop: Intro to Arduino – Digitalhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/lab64-workshop-intro-arduino-%25E2%2580%2593-digital
<p>Come learn your way around the electronics lab! This workshop is great for people new to electrical engineering (or non-EEs) to pick up some new skills!</p>
<p> </p>
2017-10-26 01:30:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2852EE380 Computer Systems Colloquium: Computing with High-Dimensional Vectorshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/ee380-computer-systems-colloquium-computing-high-dimensional-vectors
<p>Computing with high-dimensional vectors complements traditional computing and occupies the gap between symbolic AI and artificial neural nets. Traditional computing treats bits, numbers, and memory pointers as basic objects on which all else is built. I will consider the possibility of computing with high-dimensional vectors as basic objects, for example with 10,000-bit words, when no individual bit nor subset of bits has a meaning of its own--when any piece of information encoded into a vector is distributed over all components. Thus a traditional data record subdivided into fields is encoded as a high-dimensional vector with the fields superposed.</p>
<p>Computing power arises from the operations on the basic objects--from what is called their algebra. Operations on bits form Boolean algebra, and the addition and multiplication of numbers form an algebraic structure called a "field." Two operations on high-dimensional vectors correspond to the addition and multiplication of numbers. With permutation of coordinates as the third operation, we end up with a system of computing that in some ways is richer and more powerful than arithmetic, and also different from linear algebra. Computing of this kind was anticipated by von Neumann, described by Plate, and has proven to be possible in high-dimensional spaces of different kinds.</p>
<p>The three operations, when applied to orthogonal or nearly orthogonal vectors, allow us to encode, decode and manipulate sets, sequences, lists, and arbitrary data structures. One reason for high dimensionality is that it provides a nearly endless supply of nearly orthogonal vectors. Making of them is simple because a randomly generated vector is approximately orthogonal to any vector encountered so far. The architecture includes a memory which, when cued with a high-dimensional vector, finds its nearest neighbors among the stored vectors. A neural-net associative memory is an example of such.</p>
<p>Circuits for computing in high-D are thousands of bits wide but the components need not be ultra-reliable nor fast. Thus the architecture is a good match to emerging nanotechnology, with applications in many areas of machine learning. I will demonstrate high-dimensional computing with a simple algorithm for identifying languages.</p>
2017-10-25 23:30:00Pentti Kanerva (Stanford CSLI)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2885SCIEN colloquium: Light field Retargeting for Integral and Multi-panel Displayshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/scien-colloquium-light-field-retargeting-integral-and-multi-panel-displays
<p>Light fields are a collection of rays emanating from a 3D scene at various directions, that when properly captured provides a means of projecting depth and parallax cues on 3D displays. However due to the limited aperture size and the constrained spatial-angular sampling of many light field capture systems (e.g. plenoptic cameras), the displayed light fields provide only a narrow viewing zone in which parallax views can be supported. In addition, the autostereoscopic displaying devices may be of unmatched spatio-angular resolution (e.g. integral display) or of different architecture (e.g. multi-panel display) as opposed to the capturing plenoptic system which requires careful engineering between the capture and display stages. This talk presents an efficient light field retargeting pipeline for integral and multi-panel displays which provides us with a controllable enhanced parallax content. This is accomplished by slicing the captured light fields according to their depth content, boosting the parallax, and merging these slices with data filling. In integral displays, the synthesized views are simply resampled and reordered to create elemental images that beneath a lenslet array can collectively create multi-view rendering. For multi-panel displays, additional processing steps are needed to achieve seamless transition over different depth panels and viewing angles where displayed views are synthesized and aligned dynamically according to the position of the viewer. The retargeting technique is simulated and verified experimentally on actual integral and multi-panel displays.</p>
2017-10-25 23:30:00Basel Salahieh (Intel Labs)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2892Increasing Accuracy and Increasing Tension in Ho [Applied Physics/Physics Colloquium]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/increasing-accuracy-and-increasing-tension-ho-applied-physicsphysics-colloquium
<p> </p>
<p>he Hubble constant, Ho, provides a measure of the current expansion rate of the universe. In recent decades, there has been a huge increase in the accuracy with which extragalactic distances, and hence, Ho can be measured. While the historical factor-of-two uncertainty in Ho has been resolved, a new discrepancy has arisen between the values of Ho measured in the local universe, and that estimated from cosmic microwave background measurements, assuming a Lambda cold dark matter model. I will review the advances that have led to the increase in accuracy in measurements of Ho, as well as describe exciting future prospects with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and Gaia, which will make it feasible to measure extragalactic distances at percent level accuracy in the next decade</p>
<hr /><p>APPLIED PHYSICS/PHYSICS COLLOQUIUM is held Tuesdays at 4:30 pm in the William R. Hewlett Teaching Center, room 200 (see map). Refreshments in the lobby of Varian Physics at 4:15 pm.</p>
<p>Autumn 2017/2018, Committee: Roger Blandford (Chair), Aharon Kapitulnik, Bob Laughlin, Leonardo Senatore</p>
2017-10-24 23:15:00Wendy Freedman (Hanna Visiting Scholar, Univ. of Chicago)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2819Engineering Abroadhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/engineering-abroad
<p><strong>Engineering Abroad Programs information session.</strong></p>
<p>Hear about all of the opportunities you have to study abroad as a Stanford Engineering student, from <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;cd=1&amp;ved=0ahUKEwinjum7m_3WAhUhsVQKHUXdBhgQFggpMAA&amp;url=https%3A%2F%2Fsgs.stanford.edu%2F&amp;usg=AOvVaw0CzK7GJlP115r0OYanRydC" target="_blank">Stanford Global Studies</a>, <a href="https://engineering.stanford.edu/students-academics/global-engineering-programs" target="_blank">Stanford Global Engineering</a>, and the <a href="https://undergrad.stanford.edu/programs/bosp" target="_blank">Bing Overseas Studies Program</a>. Even better, hear from a panel of eight current engineering students who actually participated in these programs, and about their experiences abroad, and specifically how it contributed to their engineering studies and how they made it work for them.</p>
<p>Stay afterwards from 8:00 - 8:30 for a mixer (light refreshments provided) and talk to them yourself.</p>
2017-10-24 02:00:00Panel of eight engineering studentshttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/2883Deadline for Pumpkin Carving sign up https://ee.stanford.edu/event/department/deadline-pumpkin-carving-sign
<p><strong><a href="http://tinyurl.com/eepumpkin17" target="_blank">SIGNUP INFORMATION and RULES</a></strong></p>
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<p>View Event: <a href="https://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/ees-annual-pumpkin-carving-contest-2017">ee.stanford.edu/event/student/ees-annual-pumpkin-carving-contest-2017</a></p>
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2017-10-23 06:55:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2884Ultrasound &amp; Breast Cancer Detection [SystemX Seminar]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/ultrasound-breast-cancer-detection-systemx-seminar
<p>Each year it is estimated that over 250,000 women in the United States will be diagnosed with breast cancer and more than 40,000 will die. Breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in women and is the second leading cause of cancer death among women. According to the World Health Organization, breast cancer is the most common cancer among women worldwide, claiming the lives of hundreds of thousands of women each year and affecting countries at all levels of modernization. Population based screening has been successful in the early detection of some cancers, including cervical, colon, and breast. However, the success in mortality reduction by screening mammography has been limited in women with mammographically dense tissue. Ultrasound has the potential to be an ideal screening tool because it is relatively inexpensive and requires no injected contrast or ionizing radiation. However, the relatively poor conspicuity of some cancers by hand scanning and the considerable radiologist time necessary limit its use. Automated breast ultrasound (ABUS) allows the radiologist to read the images quickly, and separates image acquisition from interpretation, allowing for efficient screening workflow. Several studies using automated breast ultrasound show that adding ABUS to mammography significantly increases the cancer detection rate compared to mammography alone, and triples the 1 cm-or-less invasive cancers found in dense-breasted women.</p>
2017-10-19 23:30:00Ron Ho (Medical Device Companies)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2807Japanese Space Startups for the Future: The Vision of Axelspacehttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/japanese-space-startups-future-vision-axelspace
<p>US-ATMC 25th Anniversary Series of Public Seminars: Theme for 2017is "The Rise of Commercial Space Businesses in Asia"<br />Thursdays, 4:30 – 5:50 pm<br />October 5 – December 7, 2017</p>
<p>Distinguished guest speakers present new trends among firms from Asia or targeting Asia with businesses related to outer space, including telecommunications, space debris removal, payload launch services, space medicine, etc.</p>
2017-10-19 23:30:00Yuya Nakamura (President and CEO, Axelspace)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2867lab64 workshop: Intro to Electronics Labshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/lab64-workshop-intro-electronics-labs
<p>Come learn your way around the electronics lab! This workshop is great for people new to electrical engineering (or non-EEs) to pick up some new skills!</p>
<p> </p>
2017-10-19 01:30:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2851EE380 Computer Systems Colloquium: Generalized Reversible Computing and the Unconventional Computing Landscapehttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/ee380-computer-systems-colloquium-generalized-reversible-computing-and-unconventional
<p>With the end of transistor scaling now in sight, the raw energy efficiency (and thus, practical performance) of conventional digital computing is expected to soon plateau. Thus, there is presently a growing interest in exploring various unconventional types of computing that may have the potential to take us beyond the limits of conventional CMOS technology. In this talk, I survey a range of unconventional computing approaches, with an emphasis on reversible computing (defined in an appropriately generalized way), which fundamental physical arguments indicate is the only possible approach that can potentially increase energy efficiency and affordable performance of arbitrary computations by unboundedly large factors as the technology is further developed.</p>
2017-10-18 23:30:00Michael P. Frank (Sandia National Laboratories)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2875 Holographic Near-Eye Displays for Virtual and Augmented Realityhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/holographic-near-eye-displays-virtual-and-augmented-reality
<p>Today's near-eye displays are a compromise of field of view, form factor, resolution, supported depth cues, and other factors. There is no clear path to obtain eyeglasses-like displays that reproduce the full fidelity of human vision. Computational displays are a potential solution in which hardware complexity is traded for software complexity, where it is easier to meet many conflicting optical constraints. Among computational displays, digital holography is a particularly attractive solution that may scale to meet all the optical demands of an ideal near-eye display. I will present novel designs for virtual and augmented reality near-eye displays based on phase-only holographic projection. The approach is built on the principles of Fresnel holography and double phase amplitude encoding with additional hardware, phase correction factors, and spatial light modulator encodings to achieve full color, high contrast and low noise holograms with high resolution and true per-pixel focal control. A unified focus, aberration correction, and vision correction model, along with a user calibration process, accounts for any optical defects between the light source and retina. This optical correction ability not only to fixes minor aberrations but enables truly compact, eyeglasses-like displays with wide fields of view (80 degrees) that would be inaccessible through conventional means. All functionality is evaluated across a series of proof-of-concept hardware prototypes; I will discuss remaining challenges to incorporate all features into a single device and obtain practical displays.</p>
2017-10-18 23:30:00Andrew Maimone (Oculus Research, Facebook)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2880Things I Wish I Knew* as a Grad/Post-Doc/First-Year Assistant Professor https://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/things-i-wish-i-knew-gradpost-docfirst-year-assistant-professor-0
<p>Prof. Eric Pop (Electrical Engineering) will share about his journey through the late years of grad school, postdoc, and early academia, including an honest discussion of mistakes, missteps and misconceptions (many that he has personally had to overcome). He received his PhD in EE from Stanford (2005) and three degrees from MIT (MEng and BS in EE, BS in Physics). He did a post-doc at Stanford, worked at Intel, was Assistant then Associate Professor at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and joined the EE faculty at Stanford in 2013. His honors include the 2010 PECASE from the White House (the highest honor given by the US government to early-career scientists and engineers), and Young Investigator Awards from the ONR, AFOSR, DARPA, and NSF-CAREER. He is a former DJ at KZSU 90.1 FM, and more info about his present activities can be found at <a href="http://poplab.stanford.edu" target="_blank">http://poplab.stanford.edu</a>. (Lunch provided)</p>
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<p><em>Event Sponsor: BEAM, Stanford Career Education</em></p>
2017-10-18 19:00:00Eric Pop (Stanford)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2879BA-SID October Seminar: Two Technical Talkshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/ba-sid-october-seminar-two-technical-talks
<p>First Talk, "<em>Visualizing Reality in Next Generation Display Systems" </em>- David will be providing a quick update on portable and IOT displays discussing the market dynamics, opportunities and progress towards solving current issues. Then David will provide a recap on PixelDisplay's presentation at DisplayWeek 2017, and the launch of Vivid Color in the SID I-Zone. He will give updates on some interesting developments in LED, MicroLED, QD, LCD and OLED technologies.</p>
<p>Second Talk, "<em>Designing a Display Centric Product</em>" - You have designed and built a display, now what? The speaker will narrate the story of a display centric product design and explain the constraints that drove many human centered decisions. He will also go through case studies from lenartstudios, cite examples of concept designs, and explain how a design studio takes a display technology and makes it human centered.</p>
<hr /><p>The Bay Area Chapter SID is committed to fostering display education and discourse. Our active chapter organizes monthly technical talks with our popular Technical Seminar Series. They also host free networking events after each series, which offers a wonderful opportunity to mingle with experts in the field. Most of the talks are archived and available to members on the Bay Area Chapter SID website (www.ba-sid.org) where you can find slides and links to webcasts.</p>
2017-10-18 01:00:00David Wyatt (Founder, PixelDisplays, Inc.) and Chris Lenart (Founder, lenartstudios llc)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2878Applied Physics/Physics Colloquium: The Brayton Batteryhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/applied-physicsphysics-colloquium-brayton-battery
<p>This talk will give an overview of work I have been doing off campus for the past several years on the matter grid energy storage using reversible heat engines and molten nitrate salt. The most recent work, a secret project at X code named "Project Malta", was revealed in Bloomberg on 31 Aug 17. My own scientific writing on the matter came out about the same time as J. Renew. Sustain. Energy 9, 044103 (2917). The talk will touch on the grid storage problem itself and why I think heat beats all other ways of solving it - including in particular electrochemistry. The bulk of the talk will focus on the concept of a closed-cycle Brayton engine and the many aspects of "old time physics" associated with it: equation of state thermo-dynamics, adiabatic efficiency, metals creep, entropy creation in counterflow heat exchange, salt corrosion, high-speed bearings, hard permanent magnetism, torque limits of high-speed motor-generators imposed by Maxwell's equations and vibration physics, simulation of physical linkages with power semiconductors, and so forth. The larger idea underneath is that lowering costs to the bone is the problem, and that the physics of heat transfer facilitates this. It has no land use issues, it can be easily scaled up to the size of megacities at low cost, and it is safe - meaning that the nuclear weapon's worth of energy one most store cannot be released all at once. I will show images of the (tiny) released reprototype engine, which is about 2 m long, 0.6 m in diameter, and has the power of a diesel locomotive.<span>This talk will give an overview of work I have been doing off campus for the past several years on the matter grid energy storage using reversible heat engines and molten nitrate salt. The most recent work, a secret project at X code named "Project Malta", was revealed in Bloomberg on 31 Aug 17. My own scientific writing on the matter came out about the same time as J. Renew. Sustain. Energy 9, 044103 (2917). The talk will touch on the grid storage problem itself and why I think heat beats all other ways of solving it - including in particular electrochemistry. The bulk of the talk will focus on the concept of a closed-cycle Brayton engine and the many aspects of "old time physics" associated with it: equation of state thermo-dynamics, adiabatic efficiency, metals creep, entropy creation in counterflow heat exchange, salt corrosion, high-speed bearings, hard permanent magnetism, torque limits of high-speed motor-generators imposed by Maxwell's equations and vibration physics, simulation of physical linkages with power semiconductors, and so forth. The larger idea underneath is that lowering costs to the bone is the problem, and that the physics of heat transfer facilitates this. It has no land use issues, it can be easily scaled up to the size of megacities at low cost, and it is safe - meaning that the nuclear weapon's worth of energy one most store cannot be released all at once. I will show images of the (tiny) released reprototype engine, which is about 2 m long, 0.6 m in diameter, and has the power of a diesel locomotive.</span></p>
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<p>APPLIED PHYSICS/PHYSICS COLLOQUIUM is held Tuesdays at 4:30 pm in the William R. Hewlett Teaching Center, room 200 (see map). Refreshments in the lobby of Varian Physics at 4:15 pm.</p>
<p>Autumn 2017/2018, Committee: Roger Blandford (Chair), Aharon Kapitulnik, Bob Laughlin, Leonardo Senatore</p>
2017-10-17 23:15:00Robert Laughlin (Stanford)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2818Lab Sharing Eventhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/department/lab-sharing-event
<p>In collaboration with EH&amp;S, Stanford Recycling, Property Management, and the Stanford Biosciences Student Association, the Cardinal Green Labs program is excited to host another Lab Sharing Event on Tuesday, October 17 from 11am to 3pm at the School of Medicine Herb Garden (along Discovery Walk right across from Li Ka Shing). We will be accepting donations starting at 10am.</p>
<p><strong>All Stanford University labs are welcome! This is a great opportunity to donate usable items that your lab no longer needs and find some free items your lab could use.</strong></p>
2017-10-17 18:00:00 to 2017-10-17 22:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2802lab64 workshop: Mechanical How-To Session 3https://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/lab64-workshop-mechanical-how-session-3
<p>Please join us for <strong>Mechanical How-To Session 3</strong> (MONDAY, Oct. 16th, 7:30 to 9:30 PM)<br />This session will focus on:<br />• Copy sketch from assembly to part<br />• Mold cavity<br />• Making a revolved extrusion<br />• Making a swept extrusion<br />• Embossing text<br />• Making a direct extrusion at the assembly level<br />• Finishing the Arduino Uno enclosure<br />• Confirming fit (making sure the power jack will mate, etc.)<br />• Once you are done, preparing to 3D print the enclosure</p>
<p>We're showing you how to do this so you can make all sorts of enclosures for your own projects and be sure they<br />will work as expected. </p>
2017-10-17 02:30:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2876IT-Forum: Information Theoretic Limits of Molecular Communication and System Design Using Machine Learninghttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/it-forum-information-theoretic-limits-molecular-communication-and-system-design-using
<p>Molecular communication is a new and bio-inspired field, where chemical signals are used to transfer information instead of electromagnetic or electrical signals. In this paradigm, the transmitter releases chemicals or molecules and encodes information on some property of these signals such as their timing or concentration. The signal then propagates the medium between the transmitter and the receiver through different means such as diffusion, until it arrives at the receiver where the signal is detected and the information decoded. This new multidisciplinary field can be used for in-body communication, secrecy, networking microscale and nanoscale devices, infrastructure monitoring in smart cities and industrial complexes, as well as for underwater communications. Since these systems are fundamentally different from telecommunication systems, most techniques that have been developed over the past few decades to advance radio technology cannot be applied to them directly.</p>
<p>In this talk, we first explore some of the fundamental limits of molecular communication channels, evaluate how capacity scales with respect to the number of particles released by the transmitter, and the optimal input distribution. Finally, since the underlying channel models for some molecular communication systems are unknown, we demonstrate how techniques from machine learning and deep learning can be used to design components such as detection algorithms, directly from transmission data, without any knowledge of the underlying channel models.</p>
2017-10-16 22:25:00 to 2017-10-16 23:25:00Nariman Farsad, PhD (EE, Stanford)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2877OSA Welcome BBQhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/osa-welcome-bbq
<p>The Stanford Optical Society will be holding their annual Welcome BBQ. All are welcome!</p>
<p>Come eat and meet some new people, and learn more about what the optical society does (e.g., speakers, outreach, and fun).</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Details available by joining their <a href="https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/optsoc-all" target="_blank">mailing list</a>.</p>
2017-10-14 00:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2860Estimation of entropy and differential entropy beyond i.i.d. and discrete distributionshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/estimation-entropy-and-differential-entropy-beyond-iid-and-discrete-distributions
<p>Recent years have witnessed significant progress in entropy and mutual information estimation, in particular in the large alphabet regime. Concretely, there exist efficiently computable estimators whose performance with n samples is essentially that of the maximum likelihood estimator with n log(n) samples, a phenomenon termed "effective sample size enlargement". Generalizations to processes with memory (estimation of the entropy rate) and continuous distributions (estimation of the differential entropy) have remained largely open. This talk is about the challenges behind those generalizations and recent progress in this direction. For estimating the entropy rate of a Markov chain, we show that when the mixing time is not too slow, at least S^2/log(S) samples are required to consistently estimate the entropy rate, where S is the size of the state space. In contrast, the empirical entropy rate requires S^2 samples to achieve consistency even if the Markov chain is i.i.d. We propose a general approach to achieve the S^2/log(S) sample complexity, and illustrate our results through estimating the entropy rate of the English language from the Penn Treebank (PTB) and the Google 1 Billion Word Dataset. For differential entropy estimation, we characterize the minimax behavior over Besov balls, and show that a fixed-k nearest neighbor estimator adaptively achieves the minimax rates up to logarithmic factors without knowing the smoothness of the density. The "effective sample size enlargement" phenomenon holds in both the Markov chain case and the case of continuous distributions.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><em>Joint work with Weihao Gao, Yanjun Han, Chuan-Zheng Lee, Pramod Viswanath, Tsachy Weissman, Yihong Wu, and Tiancheng Yu.</em></p>
2017-10-13 20:15:00Jiantao Jiao (Graduate Student, Stanford University)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2861Quantum Computing: State of the Art and Industrial Applications [SystemX Seminar]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/quantum-computing-state-art-and-industrial-applications-systemx-seminar
<p>Theoretically, quantum computation has shown a significant asymptotic runtime enhancement in the performance of specific calculations when compared to their classical counterparts. By leveraging entanglement in multipartite quantum systems as a computational resource, it is hoped that quantum computers will find widespread utility in industry. In this talk I will present an overview of quantum computation with a focus on the scientific and technological advancements that could make quantum computers a reality. Special attention will be given to superconducting qubits as a promising hardware platform that can be fabricated by standard CMOS processes.</p>
2017-10-12 23:30:00Alexander Papageorge (Rigetti Quantum Computing)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2808On the Business Implications of Google’s Lunar XPRIZE https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/business-implications-google%25E2%2580%2599s-lunar-xprize
<p>US-ATMC 25th Anniversary Series of Public Seminars: Theme for 2017is "The Rise of Commercial Space Businesses in Asia"<br />Thursdays, 4:30 – 5:50 pm<br />October 5 – December 7, 2017</p>
<p>Distinguished guest speakers present new trends among firms from Asia or targeting Asia with businesses related to outer space, including telecommunications, space debris removal, payload launch services, space medicine, etc.</p>
<p> </p>
2017-10-12 23:30:00Ryutaro Ichikawa (ispace) and Rahul Narayan (TeamIndus)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2866A simulation based technique for material characterization: Electrical defect spectroscopy for novel device engineering and performance/reliability predictionhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/simulation-based-technique-material-characterization-electrical-defect-spectroscopy
<p>In this work we will present a simulation-based technique that allows an in depth characterization of microscopic material properties including defects (e.g. distribution within the bandgap, atomic properties), which are crucial to either engineer novel memory devices (e.g. DRAM, RRAM, FeRAM, ...) and predict electron device reliability and variability.</p>
<p>This technique is based on a multiscale modeling and simulation platform connecting microscopic material properties to device electrical characteristics, which relies on a novel material-related microscopic approach for the description of the physical mechanisms governing charge-transport and material changes occurring during the device operation and aging. Charge trapping and transport (dominated by defect-assisted contributions), are self-consistently modeled by accounting for power dissipation and temperature increase, and a variety of material changes such as bond breakage and restoration, redox, drift and diffusion of atomic species, phase changes including ferroelectricity.</p>
<p>Automatic tools for the multiscale simulations and interpretation of the electrical measurements (e.g. I-V, C-V, G-V, BTI) allows extracting the main material properties of device materials including atomic defects, which severely affect the electrical device behavior of a wide class of memory (DRAM, RRAM, BEOL selectors, FeRAM, PCM) and logic (MOSFET, FinFET) devices. Examples of the application of this electrical defect spectroscopy technique to some of the above cases will be shown, allowing a fast material characterization and the identification of the location in energy and space coordinates of defects mostly affecting the electrical device characteristics.</p>
<p>Once the defect landscape and its connection to technology and process, simulations can then be used to project the device scaling, variability and reliability, and to design novel devices such as ReRAMs, Selectors and Ferroelectric devices, which will be shown in the presentation.</p>
2017-10-12 23:15:00Prof. Luca Larcher (University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Reggio Emilia (Italy))https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2857SmartGrid Seminar: Smart Distribution Systems Research at Future Renewable Electric Energy Delivery and Management Systems Centerhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/general/smartgrid-seminar-smart-distribution-systems-research-future-renewable-electric-energy
<p>This talk will first highlight the challenges associated with upgrading the current electric power distribution system infrastructure towards a smart distribution system that can accommodate high levels of distributed energy resources (DERs). Then, an overview of the research efforts that has been undertaken at the FREEDM center will be provided. The focus will be on the new monitoring and control methods needed for the future smart distribution systems.</p>
2017-10-12 20:30:00Mesut Baran (North Carolina State University)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2862SpaceX&#039;s journey on the road to marshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/general/spacexs-journey-road-mars
<p>SSI will be hosting <strong>Gwynne Shotwell — President and COO of SpaceX —</strong> to discuss SpaceX's journey on the road to mars. The event will be on Wednesday Oct 11th from 7pm - 8pm in Dinkelspiel Auditorium. After the talk, there will be a Q&amp;A session hosted by Steve Jurvetson from DFJ Venture Capital.</p>
<p>Claim your tickets now on <a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/gwynne-shotwell-road-to-mars-tickets-37968773624?aff=efbeventtix" target="_blank">eventbright</a></p>
<p> </p>
<p><img src="https://ee.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/event_images/Shotwell%20Poster.png" alt="" /></p>
2017-10-12 02:00:00Gwynne Shotwell (President and COO of SpaceX)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2827lab64 workshop: Let’s build stuff! is an introduction to working on electronicshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/lab64-workshop-let%25E2%2580%2599s-build-stuff-introduction-working-electronics
<p>Come learn your way around the electronics lab! This workshop is great for people new to electrical engineering (or non-EEs) to pick up some new skills!</p>
<p> </p>
2017-10-12 01:30:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2850EE380 Computer Systems Colloquium: scratchwork, a tool for developing and communicating technical ideashttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/ee380-computer-systems-colloquium-scratchwork-tool-developing-and-communicating
<p>Digital tablets are no longer new or even expensive, but most of us still struggle to input our technical ideas (such as equations and diagrams) into a computer as easily as we write them on paper. I will discuss relevant existing technology and present scratchworktool.com, a tool designed to help simplify the digital writing process even without a tablet. I will also cover some of the important decisions and mistakes I made especially as I started building it. I hope these lessons will be helpful for anyone who is (or may eventually be) interested in developing similarly sophisticated products to solve a consumer-facing problem.</p>
2017-10-11 23:30:00John Stogin (Scratchworktool)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2814SCIEN Talk: Focal Surface Displayshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/scien-talk-focal-surface-displays
<p>Conventional binocular head-mounted displays (HMDs) vary the stimulus to vergence with the information in the picture, while the stimulus to accommodation remains fixed at the apparent distance of the display, as created by the viewing optics. Sustained vergence-accommodation conflict (VAC) has been associated with visual discomfort, motivating numerous proposals for delivering near-correct accommodation cues. We introduce focal surface displays to meet this challenge, augmenting conventional HMDs with a phase-only spatial light modulator (SLM) placed between the display screen and viewing optics. This SLM acts as a dynamic freeform lens, shaping synthesized focal surfaces to conform to the virtual scene geometry. We introduce a framework to decompose target focal stacks and depth maps into one or more pairs of piecewise smooth focal surfaces and underlying display images. We build on recent developments in "optimized blending" to implement a multifocal display that allows the accurate depiction of occluding, semi-transparent, and reflective objects. Practical benefits over prior accommodation-supporting HMDs are demonstrated using a binocular focal surface display employing a liquid crystal on silicon (LCOS) phase SLM and an organic light-emitting diode (OLED) display.</p>
2017-10-11 23:30:00Douglas Lanman (Oculus Research)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2847ISL Colloquium: Dykstra’s Algorithm, ADMM, and Coordinate Descent: Connections, Insights, and Extensionshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/isl-colloquium-dykstra%25E2%2580%2599s-algorithm-admm-and-coordinate-descent-connections-insights
<p>We study connections between Dykstra's algorithm for projecting onto an intersection of convex sets, the augmented Lagrangian method of multipliers or ADMM, and block coordinate descent. We prove that coordinate descent for a regularized regression problem, in which the penalty is a separable sum of support functions, is exactly equivalent to Dykstra's algorithm applied to the dual problem. ADMM on the dual problem is also seen to be equivalent, in the special case of two sets, with one being a linear subspace. These connections, aside from being interesting in their own right, suggest new ways of analyzing and extending coordinate de- scent. For example, from existing convergence theory on Dykstra's algorithm over polyhedra, we discern that coordinate descent for the lasso problem converges at an (asymptotically) linear rate. We also develop two parallel versions of coordinate descent, based on the Dykstra and ADMM connections.</p>
2017-10-11 23:15:00 Prof. Ryan Tibshirani (Carnegie Mellon University)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2848Radio Club meetinghttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/radio-club-meeting
<p>The <strong><a href="https://w6yx.stanford.edu/" target="_blank">Stanford Amateur Radio Club</a></strong>, W6YX, will hold its monthly meeting tonight Tuesday, October 10 at 7:30PM. Please join us in Packard Room 202. We'll be having a pizza social to meet and greet with new students/members. We'll also give a brief introductory talk on various activities the club is currently involved in, such as software defined radio applications, satellite communications, Earth-Moon-Earth (moon bounce) communication, radio contesting and just about anything else RF related! Feel free to participate, mingle and learn something new.</p>
2017-10-11 02:30:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2859VR demo and Mixer - student clubhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/vr-demo-and-mixer-student-club
<p>Come talk to other VR/AR people, meet potential project teammates, and try out a bunch of hardwear!</p>
<p> </p>
2017-10-11 01:30:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2858Quantum Matter without Quasiparticles: Strange Metals and Black Holes [Applied Physics/Physics Colloquium]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/quantum-matter-without-quasiparticles-strange-metals-and-black-holes-applied
<p>The quasiparticle concept is the foundation of our understanding of the dynamics of quantum many-body systems. It originated in the theory of metals, which have electron-like quasiparticles, but it is also useful in more exotic states like those found in fractional quantum Hall systems. However, many modern materials exhibit a 'strange metal' phase to which the quasiparticle picture does not apply, and developing its theory remains one of the important challenges in condensed matter physics. I will describe the simplest known quantum many-body models without quasiparticle excitations. Some of these models have a dual description as black holes in a curved spacetime with an emergent spatial direction, and the black hole mapping has proved useful in understanding some experiments.</p>
<hr /><p>APPLIED PHYSICS/PHYSICS COLLOQUIUM is held Tuesdays at 4:30 pm in the William R. Hewlett Teaching Center, room 200 (see map). Refreshments in the lobby of Varian Physics at 4:15 pm.</p>
<p>Autumn 2017/2018, Committee: Roger Blandford (Chair), Aharon Kapitulnik, Bob Laughlin, Leonardo Senatore</p>
2017-10-10 23:15:00Subir Sachdev (Hanna Visiting Scholar, Harvard)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2817lab64 workshop: Mechanical How-To Session 2https://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/lab64-workshop-mechanical-how-session-2
<p>This session will focus on:</p>
<ul><li>Quick review of Session 1 material</li>
<li>Using 3D sketch tools to outline an enclosure</li>
<li>Learning design considerations for an enclosure</li>
<ul><li>parting lines</li>
<li>fasteners (imported right from McMaster-Carr and used for design constraints)</li>
<li>how to get holes to line up</li>
</ul><li>Finishing the Arduino Uno enclosure</li>
<li>Confirming fit (making sure the power jack will mate, etc.)</li>
<li>Once you are done, preparing to 3D print the enclosure</li>
</ul><p>Enclosures ready to print will be printed during the week. At Session 3 you will get an Arduino Uno and the hardware you specify to check and see that everything fits and works as predicted so you can be gosh-darned proud!</p>
2017-10-10 02:30:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2849DUPLEX: Validation and optimization using randomized samplinghttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/duplex-validation-and-optimization-using-randomized-sampling
<p>We present Duplex- a methodology for search and optimization. Duplex can optimize nonconvex, nonlinear functions as well as functionals. It consistently outperforms known numerical methods in optimization, and can provide good solutions to functional optimization problems that are known to be highly complex for optimization techniques. Duplex is based on the random tree data structure. Duplex's efficiency is due to partitioning and separating the problem space into multiple smaller spaces such as input, state and the function space. Duplex simultaneously controls, biases and monitors the growth of random trees in the partitioned spaces.</p>
<p>We have applied Duplex to solve practical problems in analog and mixed signal validation like directed input stimuli generation, compressing analog stress tests, worst-case eye diagram analysis, and performance optimization. In each case, we consistently show orders of magnitude improvement over the state-of-the-art.</p>
2017-10-09 23:30:00Shobha Vasudevan (Electrical and Computer Engineering University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2836IT-Forum: Multi-Agent Online Learning under Imperfect Information: Algorithms, Theory and Applicationshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/it-forum-multi-agent-online-learning-under-imperfect-information-algorithms-theory-and
<p>We consider a model of multi-agent online learning under imperfect information, where the reward structures of agents are given by a general continuous game. After introducing a general equilibrium stability notion for continuous games, called variational stability, we examine the well-known online mirror descent (OMD) learning algorithm and show that the "last iterate" (that is, the actual sequence of actions) of OMD converges to variationally stable Nash equilibria provided that the feedback delays faced by the agents are synchronous and bounded. We then extend the result to almost sure convergence to variationally stable Nash equilibria under both unbiased noise and synchronous and bounded delays. Subsequently, to tackle fully decentralized, asynchronous environments with unbounded feedback delays, we propose a variant of OMD which we call delayed mirror descent (DMD), and which relies on the repeated leveraging of past information. With this modification, the algorithm converges to variationally stable Nash equilibria, with no feedback synchronicity assumptions, and even when the delays grow super-linearly relative to the game's horizon. We then again extend it to the case where there are both delays and noise.</p>
<p>In the second part of the talk, we present two applications of the multi-agent online learning framework. The first application is on non-convex stochastic optimization, where we characterize almost sure convergence of the well-known stochastic mirror descent algorithm to global optima for a large class of non-convex stochastic optimization problems (strictly including convex, quasi-convex and start-convex problems). A step further, our results also include as a special case the large-scale stochastic optimization problem, where stochastic mirror descent is applied in a distributed, asynchronous manner across multiple machines/processors. Time permitting, we will discuss how these results help (at least in part) clarify and affirm the recent successes of mirror-descent type algorithms in large-scale machine learning. The second application concerns power management on random wireless networks, where we use a game-design approach to derive robust power control algorithms that converge (almost surely) to the optimal power allocation in the presence of randomly fluctuating networks.</p>
<p>This is joint work with Nick Bambos, Stephen Boyd, Panayotis Mertikopoulos, Peter Glynn and Claire Tomlin.</p>
<hr /><p> </p>
<p>The Information Theory Forum (IT-Forum) at Stanford ISL is an interdisciplinary academic forum which focuses on mathematical aspects of information processing. With a primary emphasis on information theory, we also welcome researchers from signal processing, learning and statistical inference, control and optimization to deliver talks at our forum. We also warmly welcome industrial affiliates in the above fields. The forum is typically held in Packard 202 every Friday at 1:15 pm during the academic year.</p>
<p>The Information Theory Forum is organized by graduate students Jiantao Jiao and Yanjun Han. To suggest speakers, please contact any of the students.</p>
2017-10-06 20:15:00Zhengyuan Zhou (Stanford)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2822Bringing Transcranial Magnetic Resonance Guided Focused Ultrasound Into Focushttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/department/bringing-transcranial-magnetic-resonance-guided-focused-ultrasound-focus
<p>Using a large area transducer, ultrasound can be focused into the body without any damage to intervening tissue. In ablative applications in the brain, such as treatment of essential tremor or Parkinsonian tremor, MRI is used for targeting and for monitoring tissue temperature. Another important application of focused ultrasound is opening the blood-brain barrier for the delivery of therapeutics, such as chemotherapy and antibodies. In ultrasound-based neuromodulation, the brain is directly stimulated. For all these applications, Dr. Pauly will describe her?lab's?work to calibrate the beam pressure with patient-specific trans-skull simulation and MR acoustic radiation force imaging. Additionally, she will describe her work in phase aberration correction using MR acoustic radiation force imaging and beam simulations.</p>
2017-10-06 19:15:00Kim Butts Paulyhttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/2804Quantum Mathematics and the Fate of Space, Time, and Matterhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/general/quantum-mathematics-and-fate-space-time-and-matter
<p>The bizarre quantum world not only represents a more fundamental description of nature, it also inspires a new realm of mathematics that might be called "quantum mathematics" that turns out to be a powerful tool to solve deep outstanding mathematical problems. Similarly, new mathematical ideas address some of the most fundamental questions in physics, such as the Big Bang, black holes, and the ultimate fate of space, time and matter.</p>
2017-10-06 02:00:00Professor Robbert Dijkgraaf (Institute for Advanced Study)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2833US-ATMC (EE402A) Special Seminar: Overview — The Evolution of Commercial Space Businesses: Is Now the Time for Asia?https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/us-atmc-ee402a-special-seminar-overview-%25E2%2580%2594-evolution-commercial-space-businesses-now
<p><strong>Panelists:</strong><br /><strong>- Emeline Paat-Dahlstrom</strong>, Faculty and Former Chief Impact Officer at Singularity University, Co-Founder and Senior Consultant at International Space Consultants, and Fellow of the Edmund Hillary Fellowship, New Zealand.<br />Originally from the Philippines, Emeline has traveled to over 75 countries, and has lived and worked in the Philippines, France, Switzerland, Canada, U.S., Spain, Sweden, Austria, and China. She has a BS in Physics from the University of the Philippines and an MS in Earth and Space Science from York University, Canada. She attended the International Space University (ISU) Space Studies Program in Strasbourg, Francea, subsequently working and volunteering for ISU. She has served as Director of Program Development and Research and Director of Operations for Space Adventures Ltd, a space tourism company sending private citizens to the International Space Station. She also worked and consulted for several startups including Odyssey Moon and Moon Express, which plan commercial transport to the Moon. Emeline is co-author of the book "Realizing Tomorrow: The Path to Private Space Flight" (Univ of Nebraska Press, 2013).</p>
<p><strong>- Rick Giarrusso</strong>, Founder and Managing Director at Finance Technology Leverage LLC<br />A serial entrepreneur and leader in developing exciting new businesses and new markets, Rick is now an active investor and advisor to numerous high-growth companies. Over the past 20 years, Rick's history of launching market-changing companies has spanned software, aerospace, consumer products, energy, and financial services. In 1996, Rick co-founded and served as CFO of Rotary Rocket Company, which revolutionized the aerospace industry–effectively creating the private space industry as we know it today. Rick's work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Fortune, Time, CNN, Fox News, NBC Nightly News, New Scientist, and other newspaper articles, movies, television documentaries, and books. Rick is on several corporate boards, and has been a national trustee of the Boys &amp; Girls Clubs of America. Rick holds a Ph.D. in management science and engineering from Stanford University; he also studied engineering at Washington University and mathematics at Princeton University.</p>
2017-10-05 23:30:00Panel Discussionhttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/2803Satisfiability Modulo Theories [SystemX Seminar]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/satisfiability-modulo-theories-systemx-seminar
<p>I will give an introduction to Satisfiability Modulo Theories (SMT) solvers, including the DPLL(T) architecture that combines a Boolean satisfiability (SAT) solver with a theory solver, techniques for building individual theory solvers, and techniques for theory combination. I will also cover some applications of SMT solvers, including symbolic execution and equivalence checking.</p>
2017-10-05 23:30:00Clark Barrett (Stanford)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2809Solving the DRAM Scaling Challengehttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/solving-dram-scaling-challenge
<p>Technology scaling of DRAM cells has enabled higher capacity memory for the last few decades. Unfortunately, DRAM cells become vulnerable to failure as they scale down to a smaller size. Enabling high-performance, energy-efficient, scalable memory systems without sacrificing the reliability is a major research challenge. My work focuses on designing a scalable memory system by rethinking the traditional assumptions in abstraction and separation of responsibilities across system layers.</p>
<p>In this talk, I will discuss three fundamental ways to enable memory scaling. First, we can enable scaling by letting the manufacturers build smaller cells without providing any strict reliability guarantee. I envision manufacturers shipping DRAMs without fully ensuring correct operation, and the system being responsible for detecting and mitigating DRAM failures while operating in the field. However, designing such a system is difficult due to intermittent DRAM failures. In this talk, I will discuss a system design, capable of providing reliability guarantees even in the presence of intermittent failures. Second, tolerating failures in the application can improve DRAM scalability. The fundamental challenge of such a system is how to assure, verify, and quantify the quality of the results. I envision a system that limits the impact of memory failures such that it is possible to statically determine the worst-case results from the maximum possible error in the input. Third, we can enable high-capacity memory leveraging the emerging non-volatile memory technologies that are predicted to be more scalable. I will present my vision to redefine the hardware and operating system interface to unify memory and storage system with non-volatile memory and discuss the opportunities and challenges of such a system.</p>
2017-10-05 23:30:00Samira Khan (Assistant Professor at the University of Virginia)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2825Processors for the Data Center and Cloud of the Futurehttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/processors-data-center-and-cloud-future
<p>Current-day data centers and IaaS clouds (e.g. Amazon EC2, MS Azure, Google GCE) use microprocessors that are very similar to or the same as those used in small servers and desktops. This work rethinks the design of microprocessors specifically for data center use along with how microprocessors are affected by the novel economic models that have been popularized by IaaS clouds. This talk will describe several architectural changes including how a processor can be decomposed into sub-components (e.g. ALU, Cache, Fetch Unit) that can be individually rented in IaaS clouds, how running similar programs can be taken advantage of in the data center, how architectural features such as the flavor of memory bandwidth (bursty vs. bulk) can be provisioned and sold in the data center, and novel memory architectures that enable the creation of sub-coherence domains of cache coherence across the data center.</p>
<p>This work has not only been simulated, but many of the discussed ideas have been implemented in one of the largest academic processors ever built, the Princeton Piton Processor. Piton is a 25-core manycore built in IBM's 32nm process technology containing over 460 Million transistors and runs full stack Debian Linux with networking.</p>
<p>This talk will discuss Piton along with what it takes to tape-out a complex microprocessor in an academic setting. Last, Piton has been recently open sourced as the <a href="http://parallel.princeton.edu/openpiton/" target="_blank">OpenPiton</a> project which is an expandable manycore platform which includes RTL, thousands of tests, and implementation scripts. The talk will conclude by discussing how OpenPiton is able to contribute to the burgeoning field of open source hardware.</p>
2017-10-05 22:00:00David Wentzlaff (Princeton)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2829 Electric Vehicles and Battery Energy Storage for a Clean Energy Grid [SmartGrid]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/electric-vehicles-and-battery-energy-storage-clean-energy-grid-smartgrid
<p>The North American electric grid today is witnessing the fastest pace of change since its creation about one hundred years ago. States such as California have seen a substantial rise in the amount of energy generated from PVs on rooftops. These renewable energy resources, being intermittent, can potentially destabilize the grid when scaled up to the level of the entire grid. EVs are being added at a significant pace in California thereby increasing the load on the grid at various times of the day. While they may be considered as a load, their batteries may be exploited as battery energy storage system (BESS) devices thereby becoming an asset to compensate for the instability resulting from intermittency of renewables. The continuous decline in the cost of solar PV and lithium ion batteries for EVs is expected to further propel their growth, resulting in further increase in complexity of balancing the demand and supply of electricity. Management and control of each of these DERs – generation, storage and consumption – is a major research area for the SMERC. The integration of advanced technologies, consumer preferences and innovative pricing models to address the above opportunities and challenges would achieve a modern grid that allows for higher penetration of renewables, increase in the number of electric vehicles, higher energy efficiency, improved grid security and resiliency, and, reduced outages. The talk will present two relevant projects at SMERC: (i) $120M DOE-funded SGRDP on EVs and DR, (ii) CEC funded project, in collaboration with Southern California Edison, on integrating DERs in a micro-grid, enabled with control system.</p>
2017-10-05 20:30:00Professor Rajit Gadh (UCLA)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2815Majors Nighthttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/majors-night-1
<h3>Speak with student peers &amp; faculty about EE</h3>
<p>The EE Department will be at Majors Night! Come find out more about EE as a major, minor, honors program, and more.</p>
<p>Come chat with faculty and current EE undergraduate students. Freshmen and Sophomores encouraged to attend.</p>
2017-10-05 02:00:00 to 2017-10-05 04:00:00EE undergrad studentshttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/2719NVIDIA GPU Computing: A Journey from PC Gaming to Deep Learning [EE380 Computer Systems Colloquium]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/nvidia-gpu-computing-journey-pc-gaming-deep-learning-ee380-computer-systems-colloquium
<p>Deep Learning and GPU Computing are now being deployed across many industries, helping to solve big data problems ranging from computer vision and natural language-processing to self-driving cars. At the heart of these solutions is the NVIDIA GPU, providing the computing power to both train these massive deep neural networks as well as efficiently provide inference and implementation of those networks. But how did the GPU get to this point?</p>
<p>In this talk I will present a personal perspective and some lessons learned during the GPU's journey and evolution from being the heart of the PC gaming platform, to today also powering the world's largest datacenters and supercomputers.</p>
2017-10-04 23:30:00Stuart Oberman (NVIDIA)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2813SCIEN Talk: Computational Near-Eye Displayshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/scien-talk-computational-near-eye-displays
<p>Virtual reality is a new medium that provides unprecedented user experiences. Eventually, VR/AR systems will redefine communication, entertainment, education, collaborative work, simulation, training, telesurgery, and basic vision research. In all of these applications, the primary interface between the user and the digital world is the near-eye display. While today's VR systems struggle to provide natural and comfortable viewing experiences, next-generation computational near-eye displays have the potential to provide visual experiences that are better than the real world. In this talk, we explore the frontiers of VR/AR systems engineering and discuss next-generation near-eye display technology, including gaze-contingent focus, light field displays, monovision, holographic near-eye displays, and accommodation-invariant near-eye displays.</p>
2017-10-04 23:30:00Prof. Gordon Wetzstein (EE)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2832Maximizing Server Efficiency: from microarchitecture to machine-learning accelerators [SystemX Seminar]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/maximizing-server-efficiency-microarchitecture-machine-learning-accelerators-systemx
<p>Datacenter servers have emerged as the predominant computing platform, impacting nearly every aspect of our daily lives. The need to study, understand, and improve server systems has been the main driver of my research career. I will begin this talk with a brief overview of our work on the CloudSuite benchmarks and Dark Silicon in Servers, which identified a number of challenges and opportunities for server architecture. Then, I will describe how these results have led to our work on Scale-Out Processors and Temporal Memory Streaming, and dive deeper into my students' recent results on instruction sequence memorization and FPGA-based accelerators for machine learning.</p>
2017-10-03 23:30:00Mike Ferdman (Stony Brook University)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2810A Wandering Path to Plasma Fusion [Applied Physics/Physics Colloquium]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/wandering-path-plasma-fusion-applied-physicsphysics-colloquium
<p> The speaker recounts an unconventional journey through academic physics and the tech industry, beginning and ending with the study of plasma fusion. Over the past three years, a team at Google has collaborated with Tri Alpha Energy in applying modern data science techniques, in particular in experiment design, to the C-2U plasma confinement machine. The collaboration continues on the much more energetic "Norman" machine, being commissioned now.</p>
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<p>APPLIED PHYSICS/PHYSICS COLLOQUIUM is held Tuesdays at 4:30 pm in the William R. Hewlett Teaching Center, room 200 (see map). Refreshments in the lobby of Varian Physics at 4:15 pm.</p>
<p>Autumn 2017/2018, Committee: Roger Blandford (Chair), Aharon Kapitulnik, Bob Laughlin, Leonardo Senatore</p>
2017-10-03 23:15:00Ted Baltz (Google)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2816lab64 workshop: Mechanical How-Tohttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/lab64-workshop-mechanical-how
<p>MECHANICAL HOW-TO STARTS FALL QUARTER SESSIONS</p>
<p>This session will focus on a couple of things:</p>
<ul><li>Getting access to Solidworks</li>
<ul><li>using it locally (on your very own machine)</li>
<li>using it remotely (on one of the lab's servers, and, YES, even on a Mac with Remote Desktop) (if you plan to attend and need help loading it on your machine, please let Steve Clark know so that that is complete by Monday afternoon.)</li>
</ul><li>Importing a PCB assy</li>
<li>Looking at a .STEP file (Teensy 3.6) - What they look like on Github</li>
<li>Importing a .STEP file for further use (Arduino Uno 'cause it has mounting holes that we'll use)</li>
<li>Generating dimension planes (to make sure the board clearance is correct)</li>
<li>Using 3D sketch tools to outline an enclosure</li>
<li>Learning what to take into consideration when designing an enclosure</li>
<ul><li>parting lines</li>
<li>fasteners (YES, imported right from McMaster-Carr and used for design constraints)</li>
<li>how to get holes to line up</li>
</ul><li>Once you are done, preparing to 3D print the enclosure</li>
</ul><p> </p>
<p><strong>This should be tons of fun and save lots of time and effort when you go to work on your projects.</strong></p>
<p><strong>This is Session 1; there will be 6 -7 sessions in all and we hope to get as far as building a simple robotic arm. You can attend any or all of these workshops.</strong></p>
2017-10-03 02:30:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2831Making a Physicist with Jazzhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/making-physicist-jazz
<p>In 2005, theoretical physicist S. James Gates related a story about Abdus Salam where Salam explained that once Black people entered physics in large numbers, they would create something like jazz. Is this an essentialization of Black people or getting at the essence of how Black people have responded to the wake of slavery and colonialism? Using texts from a diverse set of disciplines -- English, ethnomusicology, and science, technology, and society studies -- I will reflect on possible answers to this question, what they tell us about how physicists are made, and whether this framework offers lessons for how physicists should be made.</p>
<p>Open to all interested. Limited seating. To attend this talk and discussion, please register online via this link: <a href="https://stanforduniversity.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_2to6cpsyuDlqFo1" target="_blank">https://stanforduniversity.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_2to6cpsyuDlqFo1</a></p>
2017-10-02 22:30:00Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinsteinhttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/2823Lab64 Welcome Partyhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/lab64-welcome-party
<p>You're invited to the lab64 fall welcome party on Friday, September 29 from 5:00-7:00 PM in Packard 064!</p>
<p><strong>Lab64 is a makerspace located in the basement of the Packard Electrical Engineering Building. If you like to build things, want to learn a new hands-on skill, or just like to meet new people, come check us out!</strong></p>
<p> </p>
<p>To <a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdYOcmDbGGU4OxU-gBA_C0Zx8P085jiA8vMwfJRb1n282a0Zg/viewform" target="_blank">RSVP and enter to win an awesome lab64 t-shirt, fill out the short poll</a>. <strong>Please RSVP by Thursday, September 28 at 11:59 PM.</strong></p>
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<p><strong>We'll be serving free food, raffling t-shirts, and introducing you to the new additions and improvements to lab64! </strong></p>
2017-09-30 00:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2828The Vision and AI Startup Landscape: Dispatches from the Entrepreneurial Front Lines [SystemX Seminar]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/vision-and-ai-startup-landscape-dispatches-entrepreneurial-front-lines-systemx-seminar
<p>No recent technology trend has attracted as much hype as deep neural networks. Thousands of startups have attached themselves to the AI wave, chasing opportunities for new cloud applications for business and social media, new system platforms like self-driving cars, and new silicon platforms. In this talk, we deconstruct the major technologies and end-system functions and examine what startups and applications are most likely to succeed, where entrepreneurship is thriving, and how deep learning innovations in real-time voice and vision, in convolutional, recurrent and generative network structures, and in new high-efficiency neural processor architectures are likely to shape future systems.</p>
2017-09-28 23:30:00Chris Rowen (SystemX; Cognite Ventures)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2811Multiscale Dataflow Computing: Competitive Advantage at the Exascale Frontier [EE380 Computer Systems Colloquium]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/multiscale-dataflow-computing-competitive-advantage-exascale-frontier-ee380-computer
<p>Maxeler Multiscale Dataflow computing is at the leading edge of energy-efficient high performance computing, providing competitive advantage in industries from energy to finance to defense. Maxeler builds the computer around the problem to maximize performance density, eliminating the elaborate caching and decoding machinery occupying most silicon in a standard processor. This talk will explain the motivation behind dataflow computing to escape the end of frequency scaling in the push to exascale machines, introduce the Maxeler dataflow ecosystem including MaxJ code and DFE hardware, and demonstrate the application of dataflow principles to a specific HPC software package (Quantum ESPRESSO).</p>
2017-09-27 23:30:00Brian Boucher (Maxeler Technologies)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2812Applied Physics/Physics State of the Departmentshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/department/applied-physicsphysics-state-departments
<p><span class="TextRun SCXW133206215" lang="EN-US" xml:lang="EN-US">The “</span><span class="TextRun SCXW133206215" lang="EN-US" xml:lang="EN-US">State of the Department</span><span class="TextRun SCXW133206215" lang="EN-US" xml:lang="EN-US">s</span><span class="TextRun SCXW133206215" lang="EN-US" xml:lang="EN-US">”</span><span class="TextRun SCXW133206215" lang="EN-US" xml:lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>colloquium</span><span class="TextRun SCXW133206215" lang="EN-US" xml:lang="EN-US"> </span><span class="TextRun SCXW133206215" lang="EN-US" xml:lang="EN-US">is an annual update</span><span class="TextRun SCXW133206215" lang="EN-US" xml:lang="EN-US"> </span><span class="TextRun SCXW133206215" lang="EN-US" xml:lang="EN-US"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW133206215">and welcome<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span><span class="TextRun SCXW133206215" lang="EN-US" xml:lang="EN-US">to our faculty, students, and friends</span><span class="TextRun SCXW133206215" lang="EN-US" xml:lang="EN-US">,</span><span class="TextRun SCXW133206215" lang="EN-US" xml:lang="EN-US"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW133206215"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>from the Chairs of the Applied Physics<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span><span class="TextRun SCXW133206215" lang="EN-US" xml:lang="EN-US"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW133206215">and Physics<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span><span class="TextRun SCXW133206215" lang="EN-US" xml:lang="EN-US">Departments.</span><span class="EOP SCXW133206215" data-ccp-props="{&quot;201341983&quot;:1,&quot;335551550&quot;:6,&quot;335551620&quot;:6,&quot;335559740&quot;:280}"> </span></p>
2017-09-26 23:30:00AP/P Department Chairshttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/2801Special Seminar: Data-Centric Computer Architecturehttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/special-seminar-data-centric-computer-architecture
<p>We examine the world of infrastructure (bits, cores, and fabrics) through the lens of data. The talk begins with a survey of data sources, data varieties, and their growth trends. We review the lifecycle of data in order to understand the processes by which data is turned into insightful information. The body of the talk takes a data-centric view of the world and derives a memory-centric computer architecture, in which the primacy of data is reflected in the engineering of infrastructure. We will see that bits, cores and fabrics line up very differently in a memory-centric architecture than in traditional architectures, and even basic operating systems concepts such as virtual memory have a new design.</p>
<p>The talk concludes with a survey of long-term workload and device architecture trends, especially machine learning and memristive devices, and how that aligns with a move to data centricity.</p>
2017-09-25 23:30:00Dr. Pankaj Mehra (Founder &amp; CEO of AwarenaaS)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2799New EE Grad Student Orientationhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/new-ee-grad-student-orientation-0
<p>Check-in at Sequoia Plaza (in front of the Packard and Hewlett Buildings)...</p>
2017-09-21 15:00:00 to 2017-09-22 20:00:00Various Speakershttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/2800Stanford Imaging Symposiumhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/general/stanford-imaging-symposium
<p>All undergraduate students, graduate students, post-doctorates, faculty, and staff are invited to attend a symposium exploring the breadth of imaging research at Stanford. Students and post-doctorates are encouraged to present a poster at the event. To RSVP and/or submit a poster title, please visit the website below.</p>
<p>Invited Speakers</p>
<ul><li><strong>John Boone:</strong> Professor of Radiology at UC Davis who has developed a novel CT imaging system to be used for mammography.</li>
<li><strong>Vik Bajaj:</strong> Co-founder and former Chief Scientific Officer of Verily (formerly Google Life Sciences); currently the head of Precision Medicine and Translational Science at GRAIL, a startup focused on early cancer detection.</li>
</ul>2017-09-19 20:00:00 to 2017-09-20 00:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2721Bing Overseas Studies Program Teaching Fellow Application deadlinehttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/bing-overseas-studies-program-teaching-fellow-application-deadline
<p><strong>Spend a quarter abroad, obtain valuable teaching experience, and get paid doing it – apply for the Teaching Fellowship in Kyoto, Japan!</strong></p>
<p>Currently, the EE Department is looking to fill one Teaching Fellow position for the Bing Overseas Studies Program (BOSP) in Kyoto, Japan. The BOSP is managed by Stanford's Overseas Studies Program (OSP) office, and is a Stanford Center for Technology and Innovation (SCTI) initiative in Kyoto. Additionally, it is an enriching experience and great opportunity for EE students who wish to gain further teaching experience and travel abroad.</p>
<p>Funding:</p>
<ul><li>A stipend which follows the structure currently in place on the Stanford Campus.</li>
<li>Health care subsidy</li>
<li>Round trip airfare for the TF and optionally for the spouse/partner.</li>
</ul><p> </p>
<p>Overseas Studies provides funding for this position to compensate for the location of the position and the impacts that this has on the TF's daily life. Overseas Studies provides the following funding:</p>
<ul><li>Housing of an apartment in Kyoto including utilities and local phone service. This will match the accommodations offered to Stanford Students who stay in apartments.</li>
<li>A Supplementary Meal Allowance equal to the current apartment student meal allowance to supplement living expenses while in Japan.</li>
</ul><p><em>Reimbursements and support for living expenses while in Kyoto will be managed by the Kyoto Center Office.</em></p>
<p>Teaching:</p>
<ul><li>ENGR 40M in Spring 2018 in Kyoto</li>
</ul><p> </p>
<p>Kyoto Spring Quarter Teaching Fellow 2018 <strong><a href="https://gradapps.stanford.edu/ClassMgmt/" target="_blank">application</a>.</strong> Please note that the application deadline is September 15th, 2017. Contact <a href="mailto:rcpham@stanford.edu">EE Student Services</a> with questions.</p>
2017-09-16 00:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2795Labor Day (Holiday)https://ee.stanford.edu/event/general/labor-day-holiday
<p>Labs are available with card access.</p>
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<p>Please plan accordingly.</p>
2017-09-04 07:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2737REU Presentation Dayhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/reu-presentation-day
<p>Please join us for the <strong>Electrical Engineering REU Final Presentation Day</strong>.</p>
<p>The oral session will begin at 12noon in AllenX Auditorium; the poster session will begin at 2:30pm in Packard Atrium.</p>
<p>Research areas include:</p>
<ul><li>Circuits and Physical Systems,</li>
<li>Materials and Devices, and</li>
<li>Signals and Information Systems</li>
</ul><p><em>Thank you for supporting the EE REU Program!</em></p>
<p>Read about <strong><a href="https://ee.stanford.edu/academics/reu">Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU</a></strong>)</p>
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2017-08-31 19:00:00 to 2017-09-01 00:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2713Full Duplex Networking: A solution for 5G or not yet?https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/full-duplex-networking-solution-5g-or-not-yet
<p>Full duplex communication technology is maturing thanks to recent advances in reducing self interference to very small levels. This potentially paves the way for deploying this technology in sub 6 GHz bands in 5G networks. However, there are still major challenges in attaining this goal; 5G ecosystems are expected to incorporate dense networks, and such networks can increase the level of multiuser interference in full duplex regime. This problem can be more serious in mobile full duplex communication. This talk will go through the challenges ahead for deploying FD technology in 5G and tries to discuss about some of the solutions.</p>
2017-08-29 18:00:00 to 2017-08-29 19:00:00Dr. Mohammad Shikh-Bahaeihttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/2736Call for Applications: Stanford Neurosciences Institute Postdoctoral Fellowship (due August 28)https://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/call-applications-stanford-neurosciences-institute-postdoctoral-fellowship-due-august
<p>We are pleased to announce the call for applications for the <strong>2018 Stanford Neurosciences Institute Interdisciplinary Scholar Awards</strong>.</p>
<p>These awards provide funding to extraordinary postdoctoral scientists at Stanford University engaging in highly interdisciplinary research in the neurosciences broadly defined.</p>
<p>Selected scholars will be provided funding for two years, to be utilized for payments toward tuition, salary, and health benefits. In addition, our scholars meet for quarterly luncheons, visit each others' labs to learn about different areas of study and research techniques, develop skills to communicate with a non-scientific audience, and present "elevator pitches" of their research aims and accomplishments to the Executive Committee.</p>
<p> </p>
<ul><li>Candidates in a variety of disciplines will be considered: basic and clinical neurosciences, biomedical sciences, physical sciences, social sciences, engineers, and experts in human behavior from the fields of education, law, business, and humanities.</li>
<li>Women and under-represented minority postdocs are encouraged to apply.</li>
<li>Applications are due on August 28, 2017 and the awardees will be announced in December 2017.</li>
</ul>2017-08-29 00:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2695REU Seminar: How to Make a Good Poster Workshophttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/reu-seminar-how-make-good-poster-workshop
<p><strong>Learn how to design an effective research poster.</strong></p>
<p>This informative session will provide plenty of insights into poster design for REU students, answer all their questions, and provide helpful tools for future poster making. </p>
2017-08-22 22:30:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2712REU Seminar: Research-to-Technology-to-Startup and the Internet of Thingshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/reu-seminar-research-technology-startup-and-internet-things
<p>Andrew Scheuermann earned a PhD in Materials Science and Engineering at Stanford working on silicon electronics and renewable energy technologies under Professor Paul McIntyre and Chris Chidsey. He subsequently founded and currently leads as CEO Arch Systems, a venture-backed company scaling up a modular platform for the so-called industrial internet of things. Andrew was also one of the early team members that helped build StartX, now one of the top startup accelerators in the world, and was selected as Forbes 30 under 30 in 2016.</p>
<p>In this seminar, Andrew will share his own experience moving from research to technology development to starting a company, and attempt to answer more of your questions than just pontificate about the general case of such transitions. He will also provide a special lens into what is happening with the new set of technologies called the 'industrial internet of things'. Andrew will highlight what challenges remain unsolved for research, what areas require research to technology development, and where new startup ventures may be possible.</p>
2017-08-15 17:00:00Andrew Scheuermann, Ph.D (Arch Systems)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2710Special Seminar: Silicon Photonics for near- and mid-IR sensing applicationshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/special-seminar-silicon-photonics-near-and-mid-ir-sensing-applications
<p>Building on the technology and infrastructure of the CMOS world, silicon photonics has become a mature and mainstream platform for high datarate transceivers in telecommunication, data communication and interconnects. But there are so many other applications that could benefit from the key assets of silicon photonics. In particular in the field of sensing the opportunities are endless, from biosensing to 3D imaging, from fiber sensor readout to spectroscopic sensing of liquid or gaseous analytes. In this talk I will discuss some of the key scientific challenges encountered when applying silicon photonics to sensing functions.</p>
2017-08-14 17:30:00Roel Baets (Ghent University) https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2729REU Seminar: Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Enjoy Asking Hard Research Questionshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/reu-seminar-dr-strangelove-or-how-i-learned-stop-worrying-and-enjoy-asking-hard
<p>In this seminar we will discuss what it's like to do science &amp; engineering research, how to be a productive researcher, and how to ask (hard) research questions. We will also discuss the importance of creativity, collaborations, and social skills for researchers. We will explore the importance of focused long-term research, what parts of "publish or perish" culture make sense, and why running a research team is a lot like running a small company. Examples will come from Prof. Pop's 20+ year research career and from recent research news, including anecdotes and lessons from Nobel prize-winning discoveries.</p>
2017-08-08 17:00:00Prof. Eric Pop (Stanford)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2709Special Seminar: Understanding and Improving the Latency of DRAM-Based Memory Systemshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/special-seminar-understanding-and-improving-latency-dram-based-memory-systems
<p>Over the past two decades, the storage capacity and access bandwidth of main memory have improved tremendously, by 128x and 20x, respectively. These improvements are mainly due to the continuous technology scaling of DRAM (dynamic random-access memory), which has been used as the physical substrate for main memory. In stark contrast with capacity and bandwidth, DRAM latency has remained almost constant, reducing by only 1.3x in the same time frame. Therefore, long DRAM latency continues to be a critical performance bottleneck in modern systems. Increasing core counts, and the emergence of increasingly more data-intensive and latency-critical applications further stress the importance of providing low-latency memory accesses.</p>
<p>In this talk, we will identify three main problems that contribute significantly to long latency of DRAM accesses. To address these problems, we show that (1) augmenting DRAM chip architecture with simple and low-cost features, and (2) developing a better understanding of manufactured DRAM chips together leads to significant memory latency reduction. Our new proposals significantly improve both system performance and energy efficiency.</p>
2017-08-07 23:00:00Dr. Kevin Chang (Carnegie Mellon University)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2724Maker lab64 Expansion Workshopshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/maker-lab64-expansion-workshops
<p>July 23rd <strong>and</strong> July 30th, 2-6pm<br />Come join old &amp; new friends to help set up rooms inside Packard for electronics work, electro-mechanical design and fabrication, soft robotics, wearable electronics, and more.</p>
<p>If you're interested in participating in this summer's expansion workshops, p<a href="https://goo.gl/forms/gjA8JEl3srwKLVqP2" target="_blank">lease RSVP here</a>.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>About Maker lab64:</strong><br />EE's lab64 provides Stanford students with a community-oriented makerspace to work on projects that focus on electronic systems. Maker lab64 is housed in room 064 of the Packard Building. Access to lab64 is free and no experience is necessary to join. We're happy to teach as much as anyone is excited to learn. Learn <a href="https://ee.stanford.edu/student-resources/lab64">more about lab64</a>.</p>
<p> </p>
2017-07-30 21:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2718Japan-U.S. Innovation Awards Symposium [US-Asia Technology Management Center]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/general/japan-us-innovation-awards-symposium-us-asia-technology-management-center
<p>For the seventh consecutive year, the US-Asia Technology Management Center is pleased to cooperate with the Japan Society of Northern California in producing the Japan- U.S. Innovation Awards program, a yearlong effort to identify and recognize exceptional performance in innovation by companies in Japan and the U.S. and in collaborations between Japan and Silicon Valley.</p>
<p>The Japan-U.S. Innovation Awards Symposium is the flagship event in the program. At the Symposium, we present the "Emerging Leader" award to one U.S. and one Japanese company that are already beginning to transform a major industry value chain (our first U.S. awardee was Tesla Motors in 2011), and we recognize five Japanese startup companies built around exceptionally exciting innovations that will be of special interest to the Silicon Valley community. This year, for the first time in five years, we will also present a "Special Award for Japan-U.S. Cooperation in Innovation." Top executives of the awardees receive the awards and participate in panel discussions about innovation and the relevance of their efforts to Silicon Valley.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Discounted early registration is available through Friday, June 16. We recommend that you go ahead and register to ensure your place with over 300 members of the Silicon Valley business community as we celebrate the interactions between the Japan and the San Francisco/Silicon Valley innovation &amp; entrepreneurship ecosystems. Gain fresh perspectives into ongoing Japan-U.S. innovation and business creation, including case studies for success, not available elsewhere.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Admission fee; current Stanford ID holders may use special registration code "INNOV17-STANFORD"</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Public welcome : registration required : light refreshments</p>
2017-07-28 20:30:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2698REU Seminar: Quantum nanophotonicshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/reu-seminar-quantum-nanophotonics
<p>By completely opening the parameter space in nanophotonics design, new functionalities and better performance relative to traditional optoelectronics can be achieved. We have recently developed an inverse approach to design nanophotonic structures based only on their desired performance. Moreover, constraints including structure robustness, fabrication error, and minimum feature sizes can be incorporated in design, without need to have an optics expert as a designer. Such structures are fully fabricable using modern lithography and nanofabrication techniques. We have also demonstrated devices designed using this approach, including ultra-compact and efficient wavelength and power splitters on the silicon platform. Beyond integrated photonics, this approach can also be applied to design quantum photonic circuits. For example, we are working on inverse design of nanoresonators that can localize photons efficiently into sub-wavelength volumes and lead to studies of new regimes of light-matter interaction, and new applications in computing, communications, and sensing. While our traditional quantum nanophotonics platform is based on quantum dots inside photonic crystal cavities, we have recently focused on color centers in diamond and silicon carbide, which could potentially bring these experiments to room temperature and facilitate scaling to large quantum networks.</p>
2017-07-25 17:00:00Prof. Jelena Vuckovic (Stanford)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2708Maker lab64 Expansion Workshopshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/maker-lab64-expansion-workshops
<p>July 23rd <strong>and</strong> July 30th, 2-6pm<br />Come join old &amp; new friends to help set up rooms inside Packard for electronics work, electro-mechanical design and fabrication, soft robotics, wearable electronics, and more.</p>
<p>If you're interested in participating in this summer's expansion workshops, p<a href="https://goo.gl/forms/gjA8JEl3srwKLVqP2" target="_blank">lease RSVP here</a>.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>About Maker lab64:</strong><br />EE's lab64 provides Stanford students with a community-oriented makerspace to work on projects that focus on electronic systems. Maker lab64 is housed in room 064 of the Packard Building. Access to lab64 is free and no experience is necessary to join. We're happy to teach as much as anyone is excited to learn. Learn <a href="https://ee.stanford.edu/student-resources/lab64">more about lab64</a>.</p>
<p> </p>
2017-07-23 21:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2718REU Seminar: Soft Electronic Systems for Biomedical Deviceshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/reu-seminar-soft-electronic-systems-biomedical-devices
<p>Conventional electronic devices are mechanically stiff and therefore cannot seamlessly interface with the body, which is mechanically soft. In this talk, I will review new advances in the field of stretchable electronics, where advances in materials science, mechanics, and electronics combine to produce mechanically soft and stretchable electronic systems with advanced sensing functionality. This new class of devices can form excellent interfaces with body parts, including the brain, heart, and skin. In this talk, Professor Fan will discuss specifically the use of these electronic platforms as next generation electrodes, skin-like tattoos, catheters, and bio-resorbable sensors</p>
2017-07-18 17:00:00Prof. Jonathan Fan (Stanford)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2707REU Seminar: Engineering Consultinghttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/general/reu-seminar-engineering-consulting
<p>In many industries, engineering consultants are hired to solve challenging technical problems that cannot be solved in-house. But what exactly does this process involve, and how do these professionals find a solution to these problems? In this talk, Dr. Jessica Piper will give an overview of the engineering consulting profession and Exponent Inc, the largest engineering consulting firm in the world. The talk will also cover interesting examples of real cases from the Electrical Engineering &amp; Computer Science group, including example work in optics and consumer electronics.</p>
2017-07-11 17:00:00Jessica Piper, Ph.D (Exponent, Inc)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2706REU Orientation 2017https://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/reu-orientation-2017
<p><strong>REU Orientation</strong> </p>
<p>The Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program is 10 weeks long. Orientation provides answers to any questions participating students have, including how to get paid, and requirements for the final presentation.</p>
<p> </p>
2017-06-29 17:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2705Design, stability and control of ad-hoc microgrids [SmartGrid Seminar]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/design-stability-and-control-ad-hoc-microgrids-smartgrid-seminar
<p>Microgrids are a promising and viable solution for integrating the distributed generation resources in future power systems. Similar to large-scale power systems, microgrids are prone to a range of instability mechanisms and are naturally fragile with respect to disturbances. However, existing planning and operation practices employed in large scale transmission grids usually cannot be downscaled to small low-voltage microgrids. This talk will discuss the concept of ad-hoc microgrids that allow for arbitrary interconnection and switching with guaranteed stability. Although the problem of microgrid stability and control has received a lot of attention in the last years, vast majority of existing works assumed that the network configuration is given and fixed. Moreover, only few works have accounted for electromagnetic delays that will be shown to play a critical role in the context of stability.</p>
<p>The talk will introduce a new mathematical framework for characterization and certification of stability in an ad-hoc setting and derive the formal design constraints for both DC and AC networks. In the context of low-voltage DC network, the corresponding derivations will employ the Brayton-Moser potential theory and result in simple conditions on load capacitances that guarantee both small-signal and transient stability. Whereas for AC microgrids, the singular perturbation analysis will be used to derive simple relations for the droop coefficient of neighboring networks. The talk will conclude with a discussion of key open problems and challenges.</p>
2017-06-28 20:30:00Kostya Turitsyn (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2711Research Perspectives on Smart Electric Distribution Systems [SLAC-Stanford SmartGrid]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/research-perspectives-smart-electric-distribution-systems-slac-stanford-smartgrid
<p>Electric distribution systems are transforming from a traditionally passive element to an active component of the Smart Grid with a hitherto unprecedented availability of new technologies, data, control, and options for end-users to participate in the daily operations of the grid. To realize the full potential of this transformation there is a dire need for new architectures, markets, tools, techniques, and testbeds. In that regard, this talk presents a comprehensive approach based on cyber-physical-social system to energy management in the emerging smart distribution system with new research results from on-going efforts. Topics of aggregators, incentive pricing, customer-side intelligence, and sustainability metrics as well as aspects of current and future trends in this research will be addressed.</p>
2017-06-16 21:00:00Sid Suryanarayanan (Colorado State University)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2696Special Seminar: Semiconductor Innovation and Research toward Intelligent Ubiquitous Computinghttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/special-seminar-semiconductor-innovation-and-research-toward-intelligent-ubiquitous
<p>Dr. Jack Yuan-Chen Sun received BSEE degree from National Taiwan University and MS and Ph.D. from the University of Illinois. He held research and management positions at IBM T.J. Watson Research Center between 1983 and 1997. He joined TSMC R&amp;D in 1997 as Director of Advanced Module Technology, and then Senior Director of Logic Technology. He became Vice President of R&amp;D in 2006, and Chief Technology Officer at TSMC in 2009. He is currently Vice President of Corporate Research and CTO of TSMC.</p>
<p>He made key contributions to the successful energy efficient CMOS logic SOC platforms with highest routed gate density and computation throughput for the foundry/fabless industry at TSMC. He advocated a holistic energy efficient 3Dx3D system scaling concept. Throughout his career, he and his co-workers pioneered and set many world records in CMOS, bipolar, and BiCMOS.</p>
<p>Dr. Sun received a number of technical and management awards from IBM, TSMC, professional societies, and government. He was awarded a TSMC Medal of Honor in 2011. He is an IEEE Fellow for his contributions to CMOS technology. He received the IEEE EDS J.J. Ebers Award recognition in 2015. He has authored and co-authored over 200 papers and conference presentations, 12 US patents, and several ROC patents.</p>
<p>Dr. Carlos H. Diaz received B.S. in EE and Physics and M.S. degree in EE from Universidad de Los Andes, Bogota-Colombia, and Ph.D. degree in EE from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is Senior Director of Advanced Technology Research in R&amp;D, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. Prior to joining TSMC in 1998, he was a member of the technical staff at Hewlett-Packard Co.</p>
<p>He has published over 100 journal and conference papers, holds over 30 US patents, and published one book. He served in the IEEE IEDM Technical and Executive Committees and the technical program committees for the IEEE VLSI, SSDM, SISPAD, IRPS, and EOS/ESD international conferences / symposiums. He also served at the International Roadmap for Semiconductors executive committee. Dr. Diaz was elected an IEEE Fellow in 2008 for his contributions to deep-submicron foundry technology. In 2011, he was co-recipient of Annual Innovation Breakthrough Award, Ministry of Economic Affairs, Taiwan R.O.C., conferred to TSMC's 28nm logic technology: Dr. Y.J. Mii and Dr. Burn J. Lin(process integration and process technology leaders), and Dr. Carlos H. Diaz (device engineering leader). He received the 2016 IEEE Andrew Grove Award for sustained contributions to and leadership in foundry advanced CMOS logic technology.</p>
2017-06-15 19:30:00Dr. Jack Yuan-Chen Sun (TSMC) and Dr. Carlos H. Diaz (TSMC)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2694Last Day of Finalshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/general/last-day-finals
<p>Last Day of Finals, spring quarter.</p>
2017-06-14 07:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2678Special Seminar: RC64: A Shared Memory Manycore Architecturehttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/special-seminar-rc64-shared-memory-manycore-architecture
<p>The RC64 many-core architecture combines many small cores, many shared memory banks, a hardware scheduler, and two custom active networks-on-chip: cores-to-memories and cores-to-scheduler. A shared-memory, de-synchronized PRAM-like task-based and non-locking programming model promotes simplicity and ease of programming. A theoretical model (almost) justifies increasing the number of cores while making them smaller and slower, maximizing performance-to-power ratio. Several benchmark simulations are demonstrated, showing close to linear speedup and high performance-to-power ratio in signal processing, linear algebra and machine learning applications. A software ecosystem for RC64 is also discussed.</p>
2017-06-12 23:00:00Ran Ginosar (EE Dept., Technion)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2688Towards Chip-Scale Power Management: A Circuits Perspectivehttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/towards-chip-scale-power-management-circuits-perspective
<p>Full integration of power management circuits has been a vision and a goal of the power electronics and integrated circuits communities for many years, if not decades. However, while exponential semiconductor scaling has had a profound impact on data processing, storage, and communications, the same has not been true for circuits that process and delivery energy. On one hand, this is because power delivery circuits are constrained by the size and efficiency of passive components – inductors and capacitors – and thus by Maxwell's equations and fundamental material properties. Yet, a host of applications, spanning portable computing, IOT, automotive, and renewable energy demand small, lighter, cheaper, and more efficient solutions.</p>
<p>This talk will address some of the current trends relating to advances in active and passive components, as well as new circuit architectures and design paradigms that are positioned to open the pathway to mm-scale in monolithically-integrated power conversion. A particular focus will be on the switched capacitor approach – more specifically on switched capacitor circuits and architectures that can be operated in resonant modes or hybridized with a small inductive impedance. These circuits leverage the fundamental advantages of capacitors compared to inductors, such as much higher energy-density and better scalability. Yet, compared to a pure SC approach, the use of a small amount of magnetic energy storage can dramatically improve power-density, efficiency, and add capabilities for variable regulation.</p>
<p>The talk will present a generalized framework for comparison of arbitrary converter topologies based on a charge-multiplier approach. This will be used to highlight which topologies – some well-known, some yet to be explored – have good prospects for high-density integration. Several past integrated circuit prototypes will be highlighted that achieved records for efficiency and power density in bulk CMOS.</p>
2017-06-08 23:30:00Jason T. Stauth (Dartmouth)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2686Ethics, Algorithms, and Systems [EE380 Computer Systems]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/ethics-algorithms-and-systems-ee380-computer-systems
<p>The Internet has made possible new means of manipulating opinions, purchases and votes that are unprecedented in human history in their effectiveness, scale and clandestine nature. Whether closely guided by human hands or operating independently of their creators, these algorithms now guide human decision making 24/7, often in ways that have ethical consequences. Biased search rankings, for example, have been shown to shift the voting preferences of undecided voters dramatically without any awareness on their part that they are being manipulated (the Search Engine Manipulation Effect, or SEME).</p>
<p>Recent research shows that SEME can impact a wide range of opinions, not just voting preferences, and that multiple searches increase SEME's impact. New experiments also help to explain why SEME is so powerful and demonstrate how SEME can be suppressed to some extent.</p>
<p>In 2016, new research also demonstrated that search suggestions (in "autocomplete") can also be used shift opinions and votes (the Search Suggestion Effect, or SSE).</p>
<p>Demonstrating these possibilities in research is one thing; do search engine companies actually show people search suggestions or search results that are biased in some way?</p>
<p>In 2016, AIBRT researchers recruited a nationwide network of field agents whose election-related searches were collected and aggregated for six months before the November election, thus preserving 13,207 searchers and the 98,044 web pages to which the search results linked. This unique data set revealed that that search results were indeed biased toward one candidate during most of this period in all 10 search positions on the first page of search results - enough, perhaps, to shift millions of votes without people's knowledge.</p>
<p>Based on the success of this tracking effort, in early 2017, experts in multiple fields and at multiple universities in the US and Europe came together to creates The Sunlight Society (http://TheSunlightSociety.org), a nonprofit organization devoted to creating a worldwide ecosystem of passive monitoring software that will reveal a wide range of online manipulations as they are occurring, thus providing a means for identifying unethical algorithms as they are launched.</p>
2017-06-07 23:30:00Robert Epstein (The Sunlight Society; The American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2596Computational Imaging for Robotic Vision [SCIEN]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/computational-imaging-robotic-vision-scien
<p>This talk argues for combining the fields of robotic vision and computational imaging. Both consider the joint design of hardware and algorithms, but with dramatically different approaches and results. Roboticists seldom design their own cameras, and computational imaging seldom considers performance in terms of autonomous decision-making.The union of these fields considers whole-system design from optics to decisions. This yields impactful sensors offering greater autonomy and robustness, especially in challenging imaging conditions. Motivating examples are drawn from autonomous ground and underwater robotics, and the talk concludes with recent advances in the design and evaluation of novel cameras for robotics applications.</p>
2017-06-07 23:30:00Donald Dansereau (Stanford)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2687Last Day of Classeshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/last-day-classes
<p>Last Day of Classes, Spring Quarter.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Final examinations begin Friday, June 9, and end Wednesday, June 14.</p>
2017-06-07 07:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2677Special Seminar: Boolean Functional Synthesis with Lazy CEGARhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/special-seminar-boolean-functional-synthesis-lazy-cegar
<p>Given a Boolean relational specification G(X, Y), where X and Y are vectors of inputs and outputs respectively, we consider the problem of synthesizing functions F(X) for Y, such that Exists Y. G(X, Y) is semantically equivalent to G(X, F(X)). Such functions are also called Skolem functions for Y in G(X, Y). We focus on the case where G is given as a DAG (Boolean circuit, AIG, ROBDD, etc.), and present a compositional approach that exploits the structure of the DAG to partially solve the problem from (partial) solutions of sub-problems. The compositional step is computationally efficient, can be generalized to arbitrary Boolean operators, and always gives a function F'(X) that is either a Skolem function or an over-approximation of one. While the over-approximation can be refined by SAT-based counterexample guided abstraction refinement (CEGAR) at each step, we argue why it is beneficial to delay the application of CEGAR. We show the effectiveness of the lazy CEGAR approach by experiments on a suite of benchmarks. This talk is based on joint work with S. Akshay. Shetal Shah and Ajith John, and builds on our TACAS 2017 paper.</p>
2017-06-06 17:30:00Professor Supratik Chakraborty (IIT Bombay)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2685Stanford Libraries De-Stresshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/stanford-libraries-de-stress
<p><strong>Dog Petting • Music • Arts &amp; Crafts • Gaming • And More!</strong></p>
<p>In addition to the invaluable librarian support and awesome study spots sought after during this time of year, Stanford students are encouraged to drop by the Stanford Libraries just to de-stress.<br />Students are invited to stop by the many Stanford Libraries to participate in some stress-reducing activities before and during finals. Some of the libraries are hosting special morning coffee and snacks, dog petting dates, and karaoke. Other libraries have decided to designate areas within their buildings for games, puzzles, arts and crafts, and/or are pulling together specially selected novels for those who wish to take a break from studying to read.</p>
2017-06-06 15:00:00 to 2017-06-09 01:30:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2689A multimodality CMOS cellular interfacing array for holistic cellular characterizations and cell-based drug screening [SystemX Seminar]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/multimodality-cmos-cellular-interfacing-array-holistic-cellular-characterizations-and
<p>Cells are highly complex systems that often exhibit multi-physics responses under external stimulus. To achieve holistic cellular characterizations, it is essential to create interfaces that can provide (1) single-cell resolution, (2) multi-modality interfacing with cells, (3) real-time two-way communication (sensing and actuation), (4) compatibility with high throughput massively parallel operations, and (5) possibility of production at commercial quantities. The nanometer-scale complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) process is a potential candidate to realize cell-microelectronics interfaces. Electronics-based computations and signal processing, such as machine learning methods, may drastically relax the requirement on the physical interface and lead to further pixel miniaturization.</p>
<p>In this talk, we will present several fully integrated multi-modality CMOS cellular joint sensor/actuator arrays with multiple sensing modalities in every array pixel to characterize different cell physiological responses, including extracellular voltage recording, cellular impedance mapping, optical detection with shadow imaging and bioluminescence sensing, and thermal monitoring. Each pixel also contains electrical voltage/current excitation for cellular stimulation. These reported CMOS cellular joint sensor/actuator arrays is composed up-to 22k multi-modality pixels on each chip with spatial resolution down to 17um*17um/pixel, achieving single-cell resolution. Multi-modality cellular sensing at the pixel level is supported, which enables holistic cell characterization and concurrent joint-modality physiological monitoring on the same cellular sample. Comprehensive biological experiments with different living cell samples demonstrate the functionality.</p>
2017-06-01 23:30:00Hua Wang (Georgia Tech)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2684EE State of the Departmenthttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/department/ee-state-department-1
<p><strong>You are Invited to Attend EE's Annual State of the Department Meeting:</strong></p>
<ul><li>Come hear about new developments in the department and how student and faculty groups support our community.</li>
<li>Ask questions during a Q&amp;A session with the Department Chair.</li>
<li>Free food &amp; drinks will be served during the HappEE Hour. Please bring proof of age (21+) if you plan on drinking alcohol.</li>
<li>All attendees may enter a raffle to receive a $20 gift card (must be present to win)</li>
</ul><p> </p>
<p><strong>This meeting is open to all members of the EE community.</strong></p>
<p><strong>We hope to see you there!</strong></p>
<p><em>- EE Student Life Committee, GSEE &amp; Fuse</em></p>
2017-06-01 23:00:00Varioushttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/2682Shenzhen: An Alternative to the American way of Innovation [EE380 Computer Systems]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/shenzhen-alternative-american-way-innovation-ee380-computer-systems
<p>In this talk, we start with a top-down exploration of the electronics ecosystem of Shenzhen. We then pivot at the topic of recycling and "fakes" to build a bottom-up picture of how an innovation culture, unbridled by Western tradition, matures in the age of the Internet.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>Talk Format:</strong></p>
<p>This talk will be live streamed from Singapore and will be viewable live in Gates B3.x The live audience will have the opportunity to ask questions and interact with the speaker. </p>
<p>The live stream video will be captured and published to YouTube in the same fashion as our usual live speakers.</p>
2017-05-31 23:30:00Andrew &quot;Bunnie&quot; Huang (Bunniestudios)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2595FusionNet: 3D Object Classification Using Multiple Data Representations [SCIEN]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/fusionnet-3d-object-classification-using-multiple-data-representations-scien
<p>High-quality 3D object recognition is an important component of many vision and robotics systems. We tackle the object recognition problem using two data representations: Volumetric representation, where the 3D object is discretized spatially as binary voxels - 1 if the voxel is occupied and 0 otherwise. Pixel representation where the 3D object is represented as a set of projected 2D pixel images. At the time of submission, we obtained leading results on the Princeton ModelNet challenge. Some of the best deep learning architectures for classifying 3D CAD models use Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) on pixel representation, as seen on the ModelNet leaderboard. Diverging from this trend, we combine both the above representations and exploit them to learn new features. This approach yields a significantly better classifier than using either of the representations in isolation. To do this, we introduce new Volumetric CNN (V-CNN) architectures.</p>
2017-05-31 23:30:00Reza Zadeh (Matroid and Stanford)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2644Fuse: study nighthttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/fuse-study-night-35
<p>Spring quarter '17 study nights are every Tuesday at 7:00pm in the Fuse room (Packard 318).</p>
<p>Snacks will be provided to fuel good work. We hope to see you there!</p>
<p>-Fuse</p>
2017-05-31 02:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2634IEEE Workshops on Machine Learning and Convolutional Neural Networkshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/general/ieee-workshops-machine-learning-and-convolutional-neural-networks
<p><strong>Workshop 1: May 30th (Tuesday)</strong><br />4:30 PM-5.00 PM (PT) Check In/Networking/Refreshments,<br />5:00 PM-9.00 PM Workshop 1</p>
<p><strong>Workshop 2: May 31st (Wednesday)</strong><br />4:30 PM- 5.00 PM (PT) Check In/Networking/Refreshments,<br />5:00 PM-9.00 PM Workshop 2</p>
<p><strong>Location/Venue:</strong><br />Texas Instruments Silicon Valley Auditorium<br />(formerly National Semiconductor Auditorium E)<br />2900 Semiconductor Dr<br />Santa Clara, CA 95051</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Cost $.</p>
2017-05-31 00:00:00 to 2017-06-01 00:00:00Instructor: Dr. Kiran Gunnam (Technical Director of Algorithms and DSP, Velodyne LiDAR, Inc.)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2613Protecting Quantum Superpositions in Superconducting Circuits [Applied Physics/Physics Colloquium]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/protecting-quantum-superpositions-superconducting-circuits-applied-physicsphysics
<p>Can we prolong the coherence of a two-state manifold in a complex quantum system beyond the coherence of its longest-lived component? This question is the starting point in the construction of a scalable quantum computer. It translates in the search for processes that operate as some sort of Maxwell's demon, reliably correcting the errors resulting from the coupling between qubits and their environment. The presentation will review recent experiments that tested the dynamical protection, by Josephson circuits, of a logical qubit memory based on superpositions of particular coherent states of a superconducting resonator.</p>
<hr /><p> </p>
<p>APPLIED PHYSICS/PHYSICS COLLOQUIUM</p>
<p>Held Tuesdays at 4:30 pm in the William R. Hewlett Teaching Center, room 200. Refreshments in the lobby of Varian Physics at 4:15 pm.</p>
<p>Winter 2016/2017, Committee: A. Linde (Chair), S. Kivelson, S. Zhang</p>
2017-05-30 23:15:00Michel Devoret (Yale University)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2610Carl Zeiss Smart Glasses [SCIEN Talk]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/carl-zeiss-smart-glasses-scien-talk
<p>Kai Stroeder, Managing Director at Carl Zeiss Smart Optics GmbH, will talk about the <a href="https://www.wired.com/2016/01/zeiss-smart-glasses/" target="_blank">Carl Zeiss Smart Glasses</a>.</p>
<p>This will be an informal session with an introduction and prototype demo of the Smart Glasses and an open discussion about future directions and applications.</p>
2017-05-30 17:00:00Kai Stroeder (Managing Director at Carl Zeiss Smart Optics GmbH)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2683Memorial Day (no classes)https://ee.stanford.edu/event/general/memorial-day-no-classes
<p>Memorial Day (no classes)</p>
2017-05-29 07:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2676Calibration and Dynamic Matching in Data Converters [SystemX Seminar]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/calibration-and-dynamic-matching-data-converters-systemx-seminar
<p>In the early days of integrated data converters, calibration was limited to factory adjustments made with programmable fuses and lasers. As integration levels increased, on-chip recalibration outside the factory became possible. Initially, such on-chip calibration operated only in the foreground, interrupting the conversion of the desired input. Later, calibration expanded to allow operation in the background, that is, during normal conversion. Both foreground and background calibration were done at first by making adjustments to the analog circuits. A breakthrough occurred with the realization that analog-to-digital converters with redundancy can be calibrated entirely in the digital domain. This approach shifted design complexity to the digital domain and took advantage of the rapid scaling of digital circuits. Recently, dynamic matching techniques, which have been used effectively in oversampled converters, have been combined with digital background calibration in Nyquist converters. In practice, error-insensitive analog circuit design, calibration, and dynamic matching are all important. The designer's job is to find the best combination of these techniques to meet the requirements of a given application, often focusing on minimizing power dissipation. This talk will describe issues related to all of these techniques.</p>
2017-05-25 23:30:00Stephen Lewis (UC Davis)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2673Applications of Mixed Reality in Medical Education and Beyondhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/applications-mixed-reality-medical-education-and-beyond
<p>For centuries, humans have been seeking ways to unlock the mysteries of the body and to study its structures and organs using everything from wax and plastic models, to animal models and human cadavers. As modern technology provides advances in virtual and augmented reality, we see new opportunities to teach and learn by applying our expertise in medical imaging and computation. In this talk, we will cover our work over the last two and a half years using the mixed reality Microsoft HoloLens device as a platform for teaching anatomy and related topics. A special focus will be on the social nature of this technology, which allows for "shared" or multiuser experiences that provide an enhanced level of engagement with students. We see this kind of technology as transforming education across our campus, in addition to other direct scientific and research applications in medicine, engineering, art and beyond.</p>
2017-05-25 19:15:00Dr. Mark Griswold (Case Western Reserve University)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2675Fuse: How to Declare an EE Majorhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/fuse-how-declare-ee-major
<p>If you are not yet declared or know someone who isn't and would benefit from this event, please come or pass along the information!</p>
2017-05-25 19:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2672 Regenerating codes for distributed storage [IEEE Santa Clara Valley Section]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/regenerating-codes-distributed-storage-ieee-santa-clara-valley-section
<p>TBA</p>
2017-05-25 01:30:00Mary Wootters (EE Department, Stanford)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2612How to Design Addictive Games [EE380 Computer Systems]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/how-design-addictive-games-ee380-computer-systems
<p><span>A great game seduces its player into flow state. Since we know a lot about what flow state is and what it requires, you might imagine that game's design to be a lot of work, but not mysterious. Yet 99% of all games fail. The vast majority of game designers have never designed an addictive game. In HCI research, games are analyzed based on flow state properties but that's descriptive, not prescriptive. Designing such games remains mystical. Like other performing arts, game design needs accident, luck, inspiration, perspiration, and knowledge. I would like to justify my being invited to talk so on top of the skeleton of flow, I will add some meat that you would not likely hear from anyone else. I will talk about what I learned playtesting my own work and what I was taught by great game designers, in creating games that were indeed addictive. As such, this will be a very idiosyncratic and personal introduction to the art of designing irresistible engagement.</span></p>
2017-05-24 23:30:00Charles Clanton (Sculptor, Software User Experience Designer)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2594An Information Theoretic Perspective of Fronthaul Constrained Cloud and Fog Radio Access Networks [Special Seminar: ISL Colloquium]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/information-theoretic-perspective-fronthaul-constrained-cloud-and-fog-radio-access
<p>Cloud radio access networks (C-RANs) emerge as appealing architectures for next-generation wireless/cellular systems whereby the processing/decoding is migrated from the local base-stations/radio units (RUs) to a control/central unit (CU) in the "cloud". Fog radio access networks (F-RAN) address the case where the RUs are enhanced by having the ability of local caching of popular contents. The network<br />operates via fronthaul digital links connecting the CU and the RUs. In this talk we will address basic information theoretic aspects of such networks, with emphasis of simple oblivious processing. Theoretical results illustrate the considerable performance gains to be expected for different cellular models. Some interesting theoretical directions conclude the presentation.</p>
2017-05-24 21:00:00Shlomo Shamai (Technion-Israel Institute of Technology)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2679Scientific Visualization with Blender [Stanford Optical Society Workshop]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/scientific-visualization-blender-stanford-optical-society-workshop
<p>Have you ever said to yourself: "I'm sure this paper would have been accepted if I had just included a pretty picture..."? The pretty pictures you often see gracing the cover of <em>Nature</em> can be made in a number of ways, from simple sketching in Powerpoint to full-blown 3D modeling. Among the numerous software packages available for 3D computer graphics is Blender, a free and open-source package that can be used for modeling, sculpting, animating, rendering, and more. In this hands-on workshop, I will introduce basic principles of operation for the modeling and rendering of objects in Blender. Together, we will create some simple models before diving into some advanced techniques that are necessary to make images like the one seen below. Are you the type of person that prefers working from the command line? Blender is built on Python, and can be directly manipulated from a Python console or script. I will show you how to perform some unique operations using a simple Python script, with an eye towards visualizing your own data in Blender. Are you simply looking for a method of converting a 2D image into a shiny 3D model? I will also show you how to take an SVG file and turn it into a 3D model in Blender that can be manipulated. This workshop is intended for people that are entirely unfamiliar with Blender software, but the concepts covered can easily be applied to any rendering software of your choice.</p>
<p><em>This is a hands-on workshop: bring your laptops, a keyboard with a numpad, and a mouse!</em></p>
2017-05-24 20:00:00 to 2017-05-25 00:00:00Yousif Kelaita (Stanford)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2663Fuse: study nighthttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/fuse-study-night-34
<p>Spring quarter '17 study nights are every Tuesday at 7:00pm in the Fuse room (Packard 318).</p>
<p>Snacks will be provided to fuel good work. We hope to see you there!</p>
<p>-Fuse</p>
2017-05-24 02:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2633Entrepreneurship between S. Korea and Silicon Valley: My Story as a [Korean Woman] Entrepreneur [US-ATMC (EE402) Seminar]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/entrepreneurship-between-s-korea-and-silicon-valley-my-story-korean-woman-entrepreneur
<p>Currently following her life's dream with LifeSite, the startup she co-founded in 2015 with a great team in Silicon Valley, YoonJin is an advocate for technology startup companies across the globe . Previously, she was a partner at Kstartup, a leading accelerator in Seoul, and she has served as advisor or angel investor in over 40 Korean startup companies. Prior to joining the startup scene, YoonJin was titled as Miss Korea, and she subsequently hosted her own TV show, other TV programs, and big media events for several years. In 2013 she was voted "Most Promising Female Entrepreneur" in Korea.</p>
2017-05-23 23:30:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2662Coherent Defects in Diamond [Applied Physics/Physics Colloquium]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/coherent-defects-diamond-applied-physicsphysics-colloquium
<p>Engineering coherent systems is a central goal of quantum science and quantum information processing. Point defects in diamond known as color centers are a promising physical platform. As atom-like systems, they can exhibit excellent spin coherence and can be manipulated with light. As solid-state defects, they can be produced at high densities and incorporated into scalable devices. Diamond is a uniquely excellent host: it has a large band gap, can be synthesized with sub-ppb impurity concentrations, and can be isotopically purified to eliminate magnetic noise from nuclear spins. Specifically, the nitrogen vacancy (NV) center has been used to has been used to demonstrate basic building blocks of quantum networks and quantum computers, and has been demonstrated to be a highly sensitive, non-invasive magnetic probe capable of resolving the magnetic field of a single electron spin with nanometer spatial resolution. However, realizing the full potential of these systems requires the ability to both understand and manipulate diamond as a material. I will present two recent results that demonstrate how carefully tailoring the diamond host can dramatically improve the performance of color centers for various applications.</p>
<p>First, currently-known color centers either exhibit long spin coherence times or efficient, coherent optical transitions, but not both. We have developed new methods to control the diamond Fermi level in order to stabilize a new color center, the neutral charge state of the silicon vacancy (SiV) center, which exhibits both the excellent optical properties of the negatively charged SiV center and the long spin coherence times of the NV center, making it a promising candidate for applications as a single atom quantum memory for long distance quantum communication.</p>
<p>Second, color centers placed close to the diamond surface can have strong interactions with molecules and materials external to the diamond. However, uncontrolled surface termination and contamination can degrade the color center properties and give rise to noise that obscures the signal of interest. I will describe our recent efforts to stabilize shallow NV centers within 5 nm of the surface using new surface processing and termination techniques. These highly coherent, shallow NV centers will provide a platform for sensing and imaging down to the scale of single atoms.</p>
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<p>APPLIED PHYSICS/PHYSICS COLLOQUIUM</p>
<p>Held Tuesdays at 4:30 pm in the William R. Hewlett Teaching Center, room 200. Refreshments in the lobby of Varian Physics at 4:15 pm.</p>
<p>Winter 2016/2017, Committee: A. Linde (Chair), S. Kivelson, S. Zhang</p>
2017-05-23 23:15:00Nathalie de Leon (Princeton University)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2609Fuse: Coffee &amp; Pastries with Facultyhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/fuse-coffee-pastries-faculty
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<p>Interested in various research and opportunities as an undergraduate student of electrical engineering? Join peers and faculty in Packard 318 for informal conversations and discovery (<em>and pastries</em>)!</p>
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<p><strong>ABOUT FUSE:</strong> The mission of Fuse is to improve student life and foster community amongst the undergraduates in the electrical engineering department. By serving as a platform for social activities and events, Fuse aims to establish a network that students can leverage to succeed academically, as well as encourage work-life balance and facilitate communication between undergraduates and the EE faculty and staff.</p>
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2017-05-23 22:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2671Pre-seminar presentation on &#039;Applications of Mixed Reality in Medical Education&#039;https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/pre-seminar-presentation-applications-mixed-reality-medical-education
<p>Attend Dr. Hargreaves's pre-seminar presentation to learn more about Dr. Mark Griswold's seminar, "Applications of Mixed Reality in Medical Education and Beyond", to be held Thursday, May 25th.</p>
2017-05-23 19:15:00Dr. Brian Hargreaves (Stanford Department of Radiology)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2674Supercontinuum Fiber lasers: Technology and Applications [Stanford Optical Society Seminar]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/supercontinuum-fiber-lasers-technology-and-applications-stanford-optical-society
<p>In the 1970s, wide spectral broadening of intense laser light in a non-linear material, or supercontinuum generation, was first demonstrated in the laboratory. With the development of recent fiber and fiber laser technology, namely compact high power picosecond lasers and micro-structured Photonic Crystal Fiber (PCF) commercial supercontinuum lasers have become a reality. With a typical spectral bandwidth covering over 2000 nm and output powers exceeding 20W, these sources have proved an invaluable tool. In this talk, we will cover:</p>
<ul><li>Fundamentals of how supercontinuum lasers work and the importance on the PCF design in tailoring the spectrum.</li>
<li>The properties of supercontinuum laser light and what make them unique sources.</li>
<li>The main applications today for supercontinuum laser in imaging, spectroscopy, Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) and illumination.</li>
<li>Supercontinuum technology roadmap and future applications</li>
</ul>2017-05-22 18:00:00Ross Hodder (NKT Photonics)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2661Engineering Hope with Biomimetic Systems [SystemX Seminar]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/engineering-hope-biomimetic-systems-systemx-seminar
<p><span>Biomimetic system (neural prosthesis) research has progressed rapidly in the recent years fueled by the unique interdisciplinary efforts fusing engineering, medicine, and biology. Biomimetic systems will offer viable solution and thus hope to those suffering with neural disorder diseases, which currently do not have curable solutions but potentially affect very large population of people worldwide. This talk will present the works of neural implants in Biomimetic Research Lab (BRL) at UCLA, including 1) to regain the eyesight for the blind; 2) to restore the motor function for the spinal cord injury; 3) to recover the cognition. I’ll particularly discuss about the creation, technical challenge/barrier, clinical trials, and regulatory approval of the retinal prosthesis. The success of the retinal prosthesis suggests that the technology could be applied to other physiological problems.</span></p>
2017-05-18 23:30:00Prof. Wentai Liu (UCLA and Chan Soon-Shiong Bionic Engineering Research Center)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2667The New Utility: Basic Enabler of Sustainable and Resilient Electric Energy Services? [SmartGrid Seminar]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/new-utility-basic-enabler-sustainable-and-resilient-electric-energy-services-smartgrid
<p>In this talk, we consider problems concerning the role of future utilities. Innovative operations and financial mechanisms are needed to transform utilities into future enablers of sustainable and resilient electric energy service providers. Both technical and financial issues on the road to modernizing today's utilities.</p>
<p>First, we illustrate on real-world operating problems limiting the penetration and utilization of distributed energy resources (DERs) and how these problems can be systematically solved using advanced automation and control. Automation represents a fundamental opportunity to overcome today's worst-case approach to electric energy services and offer more sustainable and resilient services. Mechanisms for better voltage support, power-electronics-based automation for stable operations systems and fast storage systems during abnormal conditions must be introduced. Although utilities should consider this approach as an alternative to building strong grids, some of these solutions are too complex for end users. Fortunately, there exists a win-win range of technological solutions by both utilities and end users. This is particularly the case when solutions are needed to operate these grids during natural disasters and cyber-attacks.</p>
<p>Second, we discuss financial roadblocks to deploy these promising technological innovations. We assess electricity markets in terms of their ability to enable DER integration at value. We also show how DERs can participate in electricity markets for energy and regulation during normal operations, but stress that there are no good mechanisms to value automation and storage. Utilities should move forward as providers of the last resort at value and be paid for taking the financial risks. If end users require uninterrupted clean services, market mechanisms must be put in place to give incentives to utilities to deploy effective technological solutions.</p>
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<p>This quarter's speakers are renowned experts in power and energy systems, and we believe they will bring novel insights and fruitful discussions to Stanford. This seminar is offered as a 1 unit seminar course, CEE 272T/EE292T for interested students. This course can be repeated for credit for the students.</p>
<p><strong>SmartGrid Seminar Organization Team:</strong></p>
<ul><li>Ram Rajagopal, Assistant Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering</li>
<li>Chin-Woo Tan, Director, Stanford Smart Grid Lab</li>
<li>Wenyuan Tang, Postdoctoral Scholar, Civil and Environmental Engineering</li>
<li>Yuting Ji, Postdoctoral Scholar, Civil and Environmental Engineering</li>
<li>Emre Kara, Associate Staff Scientist, SLAC</li>
</ul>2017-05-18 20:30:00Marija Ilić (Carnegie Mellon University)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2656Embedded Debugging Workshop [lab64 workshop]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/embedded-debugging-workshop-lab64-workshop
<p>For this Wednesday's workshop (7pm, as usual), we are lucky to have Bob Martin, the "Wizard of Make" from Atmel/Microchip, come in and teach a workshop about debugging embedded systems. We'll be working with the smart plugs from previous workshops, so if you have one, please bring it. If you weren't a part of the smart plug workshops, but are interested in learning about debugging, send me an email (sgirvin@stanford.edu) and we'll figure something out for you.</p>
<p>From Bob, to participate in the workshop, you'll also need:</p>
<p><strong>Pre-requisites</strong><br />- Windows 7 or 10 laptop (Macs OK if running a Windows image inside virtual box or parallels but there's always issues with USB)<br />- Atmel Studio 7 (latest version installed)</p>
<p><a href="http://www.microchip.com/development-tools/atmel-studio-7" target="_blank">http://www.microchip.com/development-tools/atmel-studio-7</a></p>
<p>- download off line installer, it's a bigger download but things will go faster<br />- At the bottom of the first install screen - uncheck - check for updates on web<br />- next install screen, only install AVR 8 bit, do not install AVR32 or SMART ARM, these options can be installed later<br />- next install screen uncheck option for installing ASF (Atmel Software Framework) , it's not needed and save a lot of time and disk space</p>
2017-05-18 02:00:00Bob Martin ( Atmel/Microchip)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2660Computers, Programming, Addiction, False News, Alternative Facts [EE380 Computer Systems]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/computers-programming-addiction-false-news-alternative-facts-ee380-computer-systems
<p>Today's Internet is powerful and seductive. It's burrowed itself into the way we think, feel, and respond. We have come to depend upon the availability of organized, accessible, searchable information. But with the positive effects, there are negative factors as well, with unforeseen consequences, that change the very way we experience the world.</p>
<p>Archiving and indexing all of the world's information has changed the way we think, but it has its limitations. Very low cost communication and publication have both positive and negative effects. Interactive environments are compelling and sometimes addictive. Social interactions on the Internet are different than they are in "real life". Truth seems less important than it once was.</p>
<p>This talk will identify and explore a few of these issues. Interactive discussion will be encouraged.</p>
2017-05-17 23:30:00Dennis Allison (Stanford)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2593Hyperspectral Imaging Using Polarization Interferometry [SCIEN]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/hyperspectral-imaging-using-polarization-interferometry-scien
<p>Polarization interferometers are interferometers that utilize birefringent crystals in order to generate an optical path delay between two polarizations of light. In this talk I will describe how I have employed polarization interferometry to make two kinds of Fourier imaging spectrometers; in one case, by temporally scanning the optical path delay with a liquid crystal cell, and in the other, utilizing relative motion between scene and detector to spatially scan the optical path delay through a position-dependent wave plate.</p>
2017-05-17 23:30:00Alex Hegyi (PARC)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2642Neuromorphic Computing with Resistive Switching Devices [SystemX Seminar]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/neuromorphic-computing-resistive-switching-devices-systemx-seminar
<p>Neuromorphic computing is a promising concept for low-power, energy-efficient spiking networks with the capability of self-learning, adaptation, and recognition of speech, gesture, and objects. Development of the neuromorphic computing technology is currently facing 2 main barriers: First, there is no comprehensive understanding how the brain really works; and second, there is no consensus about what technology might provide synaptic and neural circuits at the best tradeoff between cost, power consumption, and performance. The resistive switching memory (RRAM) is one of the main contender for neuromorphic components, thanks to its low current operation, small area and tunable resistance. Demonstration of brain-inspired learning feature with RRAM synapses may pave the way for future high performance, low cost neuromorphic processor and brain-in-a-chip.</p>
<p>This talk will report on the recent advances on neuromorphic hardware for unsupervised learning of visual patterns. First, I will describe a RRAM synapse capable of spike-timing dependent plasticity (STDP) with one-transistor/one-resistor (1T1R) structure. Second, I will show the learning and recognition capability of a neuromorphic chip with a microcontroller neuron and an array of RRAM synapses. Learning of single/multiple patterns, tracking of patterns, and recognition will be shown in hardware. These results support RRAM as a promising technology for future neuromorphic processors.</p>
2017-05-17 23:30:00Prof. Daniele Ielmini (Politecnico di Milano)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2664High Precision Motion Control 101: Tools for Emerging Applications [Stanford Optical Society]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/high-precision-motion-control-101-tools-emerging-applications-stanford-optical-society
<p>Precision motion control is an important subset of automation, which encompasses a diverse array of applications. Many aspects of optical engineering research and development depend on the appropriate selection and use of sensors, actuators, and controllers. In precision motion projects, the actual needs may vary widely from the originally intended specifications.</p>
<p>Some of the most difficult tasks in optics research require complex multi-axis motion control methods. Some popular examples include Additive Manufacturing (3D Printing), Sample Positioning for Crystallography, and Alignment with Silicon Photonics. In this seminar we will address concepts and challenges in selecting actuator and sensing technologies, as well as the appropriate controller techniques. We will provide researchers with an ability to understand and apply the fundamental concepts for R&amp;D precision motion projects and automation systems.</p>
2017-05-17 20:25:00David Steinberg (Aerotech)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2666Fuse: study nighthttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/fuse-study-night-33
<p>Spring quarter '17 study nights are every Tuesday at 7:00pm in the Fuse room (Packard 318).</p>
<p>Snacks will be provided to fuel good work. We hope to see you there!</p>
<p>-Fuse</p>
2017-05-17 02:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2632Morphogenesis: Geometry, Physics and Biology [Applied Physics/Physics Colloquium]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/morphogenesis-geometry-physics-and-biology-applied-physicsphysics-colloquium
<p>A century after the publication of D'Arcy Thompson's eponymous classic, "On growth and form," his vision has finally begun to permeate into the fabric of modern biology. Within this backdrop, I will discuss the geometry and physics of biological morphogenesis, with a particular focus on regulated differential growth, using examples from a range of scales: macromolecular assemblies, single cells, and multicellular tissues. Along the way, I will also discuss aspects of morphometries, the quantification of biological shape, and morphogramming, the design of bioinspired shape.</p>
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<p>APPLIED PHYSICS/PHYSICS COLLOQUIUM</p>
<p>Held Tuesdays at 4:30 pm in the William R. Hewlett Teaching Center, room 200. Refreshments in the lobby of Varian Physics at 4:15 pm.</p>
<p>Winter 2016/2017, Committee: A. Linde (Chair), S. Kivelson, S. Zhang</p>
2017-05-16 23:15:00L. Mahadevan (Harvard University)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2608 IEEE International Conference on Computational Photography 2017https://ee.stanford.edu/event/general/ieee-international-conference-computational-photography-2017
<p>The field of Computational Photography seeks to create new photographic functionalities and experiences that go beyond what is possible with traditional cameras and image processing tools. The IEEE International Conference on Computational Photography is organized with the vision of fostering the community of researchers, from many different disciplines, working on computational photography.</p>
2017-05-12 15:30:00 to 2017-05-14 22:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2645Carbon Nanotube for Logic Transistor and More than Moore Applications [SystemX Seminar]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/carbon-nanotube-logic-transistor-and-more-moore-applications-systemx-seminar
<p>We have witnessed a tremendous information technology revolution originated from the relentless scaling of Si CMOS devices. The conventional homogeneous scaling of silicon devices has become very difficult. Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are promising to replace silicon as the channel material for high-performance electronics near the end of silicon scaling roadmap, with their superb electrical properties, intrinsic ultrathin body, and nearly transparent contact with certain metals. In this talk, I will cover recent CNT progress within IBM Research for extending logic roadmap as well as few examples for beyond logic applications, such as physical unclonable function and mid-IR to THz detection utilizing unique properties from CNTs.</p>
2017-05-11 23:30:00Dr. Shu-Jen Han (IBM T.J. Watson Research Center)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2600Always-On Vision Becomes a Reality [OSA Seminar]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/always-vision-becomes-reality-osa-seminar
<p>Intelligent devices equipped with human-like senses such as always-on touch, audio and motion detection have enabled a variety of new use cases and applications, transforming the way we interact with each other and our surroundings. While the vast majority (&gt;80%) of human insight comes through the eyes, enabling always-on vision (defined as &lt; 1 mA power) for devices is challenging due to power-hungry hardware and the high complexity of inference algorithms. Qualcomm Research has pioneered an Always-on Computer Vision Module (CVM) combining innovations in the system architecture, ultra-low power design and dedicated hardware for vision algorithms running at the "edge." With low end-to-end power consumption, a tiny form factor and low cost, the CVM can be integrated into a wide range of battery- and line-powered devices (IoT, mobile, VR/AR, automotive, etc.), performing object detection, feature recognition, change/motion detection, and other tasks. Its processor performs all computation within the module itself and outputs metadata.</p>
2017-05-11 23:15:00Evgeni Gousev (Qualcomm Research)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2647Cracking Big Data with Small Data [ISL Colloquium]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/cracking-big-data-small-data-isl-colloquium
<p>For the last several years, we have witnessed the emergence of datasets of an unprecedented scale across different scientific disciplines. The large volume of such datasets presents new computational challenges as the diverse, feature-rich, and usually high-resolution data does not allow for effective data-intensive inference. In this regard, data summarization is a compelling (and sometimes the only) approach that aims at both exploiting the richness of large-scale data and being computationally tractable; Instead of operating on complex and large data directly, carefully constructed summaries not only enable the execution of various data analytics tasks but also improve their efficiency and scalability.</p>
<p>A systematic way for data summarization is to turn the problem into selecting a subset of data elements optimizing a utility function that quantifies "representativeness" of the selected set. Often-times, these objective functions satisfy submodularity, an intuitive notion of diminishing returns stating that selecting any given element earlier helps more than selecting it later. Thus, many problems in data summarization require maximizing submodular set functions subject to cardinality and massive data means we have to solve these problems at scale.</p>
<p>In this talk, I will present our recent efforts in developing practical schemes for data summarization. In particular, I will first discuss the fastest centralized solution whose query complexity is only linear in data size. However, to truly summarize massive data we need to opt for scalable methods. I will then present a streaming algorithm that with a single pass over the data provides a constant-factor approximation guarantee to the optimum solution. Finally, I will talk about a distributed approach that summarizes tens of millions of data points in a timely fashion. I will also demonstrate experiments on several applications, including sparse Gaussian process inference and exemplar-based clustering using Apache-Spark.</p>
2017-05-11 23:15:00Professor Amin Karbasi (Yale University)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2651Electric Vehicles in the Smart Grid: Optimization &amp; Control [SmartGrid Seminar]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/electric-vehicles-smart-grid-optimization-control-smartgrid-seminar
<p>The rapid electrification of the transportation fleet imposes unprecedented demands on the electric grid. If controlled, however, these electric vehicles (EVs) provide an immense opportunity for smart grid services that enable renewable penetration and increased reliability. In this talk we discuss paradigms for aggregating and optimally controlling EV charging. Specifically, we discuss (i) aggregate modeling via partial differential equations, (ii) distributed optimization of large-scale EV fleets, (iii) and plug-and-play model predictive control in distribution networks. The talk closes with future perspectives for EVs in the Smart Grid.</p>
<hr /><p>This quarter's speakers are renowned experts in power and energy systems, and we believe they will bring novel insights and fruitful discussions to Stanford. This seminar is offered as a 1 unit seminar course, CEE 272T/EE292T for interested students. This course can be repeated for credit for the students.</p>
<p><strong>SmartGrid Seminar Organization Team:</strong></p>
<ul><li>Ram Rajagopal, Assistant Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering</li>
<li>Chin-Woo Tan, Director, Stanford Smart Grid Lab</li>
<li>Wenyuan Tang, Postdoctoral Scholar, Civil and Environmental Engineering</li>
<li>Yuting Ji, Postdoctoral Scholar, Civil and Environmental Engineering</li>
<li>Emre Kara, Associate Staff Scientist, SLAC</li>
</ul>2017-05-11 20:30:00Scott Moura (University of California, Berkeley)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2575Workshop on Augmented and Mixed Reality [SCIEN]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/general/workshop-augmented-and-mixed-reality-scien
<p>This workshop will bring together scientists and engineers who are advancing sensor technologies, computer vision, machine learning, head-mounted displays and our understanding of human vision, and developers who are creating new and novel applications for augmented and mixed reality in retail, education, science and medicine.</p>
2017-05-11 07:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2567Internet of Things, Smart Plug Workshop Series [lab64 workshop]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/internet-things-smart-plug-workshop-series-lab64-workshop-2
<p>Workshop series – <strong><a href="https://docs.google.com/a/stanford.edu/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSci42RA3vKvyK2IpOaMTPWVJ2Y05UyCWrP2pOLCObeLWSd8VQ/viewform?c=0&amp;w=1" target="_blank">please RSVP</a>.</strong></p>
<p>We'll be running a four-workshop series on building an "<strong>Internet of Things</strong>" smart plug that you'll be able to use control power outlets remotely. And yes, you'll be able to keep it at the end.</p>
<p>Over the course of the workshops, you'll do everything from PCB layout to board assembly to embedded programming. All experience levels are welcome – we will teach you what you need to know (and there will be extensions for those with more experience and want to go further).</p>
<p>The workshops will be much more valuable for people who attend all four, but it will also be possible to participate if you can't make it every time. If you plan on attending the workshops, please RSVP with the following form: <a href="https://goo.gl/forms/bGRZF9CAsK3km93p1" target="_blank">https://goo.gl/forms/bGRZF9CAsK3km93p1</a></p>
<p> </p>
<p><img src="https://ee.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/event_images/-Lab64-smart-plug.jpg" alt="" width="900" /></p>
2017-05-11 02:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2623The Machineries of Doubt &amp; Disinformation: Cigarettes, Climate &amp; Other Electronic Confusions [EE380 Computer Systems Colloquium]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/machineries-doubt-disinformation-cigarettes-climate-other-electronic-confusions-ee380
<p>The tobacco industry has long employed the best marketing techniques and adopted the latest technologies for disinformation. The fossil energy industries have employed similar tactics and technologies. For both, the Internet has proved a fertile ground and by now, similar tactics have gained force in politics.</p>
<p>For example, 2009 "Climategate" theft and use of emails against climate scientists seems a precursor of recent Russian efforts in American &amp; French elections.</p>
<p>This talk uses insights from the well-documented history of tobacco and fossil disinformation machinery to anticipate further attacks on science and political processes, including thoughts about the challenges of informed skepticism in the world of Internet, Twitter and Facebook and electronic cigarettes that monitor and control usage, and may report back to the vendor.</p>
2017-05-10 23:30:00John R. Mashey (Semi-retired Computer Scientist)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2653Fuse: study nighthttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/fuse-study-night-32
<p>Spring quarter '17 study nights are every Tuesday at 7:00pm in the Fuse room (Packard 318).</p>
<p>Snacks will be provided to fuel good work. We hope to see you there!</p>
<p>-Fuse</p>
2017-05-10 02:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2631Recent Trends in the Entrepreneurship Ecosystem in India [US-ATMC (EE402) Seminar]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/recent-trends-entrepreneurship-ecosystem-india-us-atmc-ee402-seminar
<p>In our May 9 US-ATMC Director Richard Dasher engages Vish in an interactive discussion about what's going on in the ecosystem for entrepreneurship in India. This session is timed just after TiEcon 2017, so that Vish can comment on the Silicon Valley mega-conference sponsored by "The Indus Entrepreneurs" that is billed as the world's largest entrepreneurship conference.</p>
2017-05-09 23:30:00Vish Mishra (Clearstone Venture Partners)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2652New Probes of Old Structure: Cosmology with 21cm Intensity Mapping and the Cosmic Microwave Background [Applied Physics/Physics Colloquium]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/new-probes-old-structure-cosmology-21cm-intensity-mapping-and-cosmic-microwave
<p>Current cosmological measurements have left us with deep questions about our Universe: What caused the expansion of the Universe at the earliest times? How did structure form? What is Dark Energy and does it evolve with time? New experiments like CHIME, HIRAX, and ACTPol are poised to address these questions through 3-dimensional maps of structure and measurements of the polarized Cosmic Microwave Background. In this talk, I will describe how we will use 21cm intensity measurements from CHIME and HIRAX to place sensitive constraints on Dark Energy between redshifts 0.8 -- 2.5, a poorly probed era corresponding to when Dark Energy began to impact the expansion history of the Universe. I will also discuss how we will use data from new instruments on the ACT telescope to constrain cosmological parameters like the total neutrino mass and probe structure at late times.</p>
<hr /><p> </p>
<p>APPLIED PHYSICS/PHYSICS COLLOQUIUM</p>
<p>Held Tuesdays at 4:30 pm in the William R. Hewlett Teaching Center, room 200. Refreshments in the lobby of Varian Physics at 4:15 pm.</p>
<p>Winter 2016/2017, Committee: A. Linde (Chair), S. Kivelson, S. Zhang</p>
2017-05-09 23:15:00Laura Newburgh (Yale University)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2607Network-Driven Context-Aware Datacenter Server Management: Hardware/Software Cross-Layer Approaches [Special Seminar]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/network-driven-context-aware-datacenter-server-management-hardwaresoftware-cross-layer
<p>Datacenter servers running latency-critical online applications such as web search and social network are often underutilized as they are (over)provisioned for unpredictable peak service demand. This in turn hurts energy efficiency and thus the total cost of ownership (TCO) due to poor energy proportionality of contemporary servers. To improve energy efficiency, we may consider to deploy aggressive power management policies and run latency-critical applications with latency-agnostic, throughput applications. Such approaches, however, prone to violations of service-level agreement (SLA) whenever servers need to change performance and power states, which prevents servers from performing any tasks for a notable amount of time, and co-running throughput applications generate block I/O requests, which severely interferes with memory requests from latency-critical applications at the memory subsystem.</p>
<p>In this talk, tackling these challenges, I will present two techniques dubbed NCAP and CLAUD. More specifically, NCAP and CLAUD exploit the fact that the rate of network packets encapsulating requests from clients can significantly affect the utilization of datacenter servers. Thus, we propose to enhance network interface cards (NICs) and NIC drivers to measure the rate of latency-critical network packets and send special interrupts to the operating system when the rate exceeds certain values. The special interrupts allow (1) NCAP to preemptively change performance and power states of servers and (2) CLAUD to proactively throttle block I/O requests from co-running throughput applications. NCAP and CLAUD in turn allow datacenter operators to more aggressively deploy power management policies and/or run latency-critical applications with throughput applications without violating SLAs.</p>
2017-05-08 23:00:00Nam Sung Kim (University of Illinois Urbana Champaign)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2648Dynamics of Exponentials in Circuits and Systems [SystemX Seminar]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/dynamics-exponentials-circuits-and-systems-systemx-seminar
<p>Astonishing progress in semiconductor devices, circuits, and manufacturing has prompted an unprecedented revolution in electronics. "Things" are getting smarter and more connected, with higher semiconductor content. Smart personal electronics, autonomous systems, and smart factories are prime examples.</p>
<p>These impressive developments are fueled by the power of exponentials: CMOS scaling, efficiency of semiconductor manufacturing, the bandwidth efficiency of communication systems, and total network capacity have all been doubling almost every two years! The sheer scaling of CMOS has dominated the challenges and promises of advanced IC design. Advanced digital-intensive designs count on denser, faster, and cheaper switches. Along the way, analog and RF designs have creatively embraced the challenge of implementing analog topologies on digitally-optimized processes.</p>
<p>The present slowdown of the CMOS scaling trend brings exciting opportunities for "multidimensional innovations" in circuits and systems: The continuing demand for higher performance, in many applications, will further tilt solutions toward creative system and circuit topologies. Many emerging complementary technologies such as MEMS-based sensors and timing references, III-V devices, high-performance SiGe devices, and silicon photonics, will not necessarily integrate with CMOS monolithically. However, they enable opportunities for system repartitioning and new circuit topologies in applications such as sensing, power, high voltage, high-performance RF, and precision timing.</p>
<p>CMOS is here to stay for the foreseeable future! It will simply coexist synergistically with emerging technologies. This talk will discuss opportunities in "multi-dimensional innovation" that will make the future of the field less predictable.....but even more interesting and exciting!"</p>
2017-05-04 23:30:00 Dr. Ahmad Bahai (Texas Instruments)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2640Geometries of Word Embeddings [ISL]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/geometries-word-embeddings-isl
<p>Real-valued word vectors have transformed NLP applications; popular examples are word2vec and GloVe, recognized for their ability to capture linguistic regularities via simple geometrical operations. In this talk, we demonstrate further striking geometrical properties of the word vectors. First, we show that a very simple, and yet counter-intuitive, postprocessing technique, which makes the vectors "more isotropic", renders off-the-shelf vectors even stronger. Second, we show that a sentence containing a target word is well represented by a low-rank subspace; subspaces associated with a particular sense of the target word tend to intersect with a line (one-dimensional subspace). We harness this Grassmannian geometry to disambiguate (in an unsupervised way) multiple senses of words, specifically so on the most promiscuously polysemous of all words: prepositions. A surprising finding is that rare senses, including idiomatic/sarcastic/metaphorical usages, are efficiently captured. Our algorithms are all unsupervised and rely on no linguistic resources; we validate them by presenting new state-of-the-art results on a variety of multilingual benchmark datasets.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 60px;"><strong>References:</strong><br />1. Geometry of Compositionality, AAAI '17, <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1611.09799" target="_blank">https://arxiv.org/abs/1611.09799</a></p>
<p style="padding-left: 60px;"><a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1611.09799" target="_blank"></a>2. Geometry of Polysemy, ICLR, '17, <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1610.07569" target="_blank">https://arxiv.org/abs/1610.07569</a></p>
<p style="padding-left: 60px;"><a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1610.07569" target="_blank"></a>3. Representing Sentences as Low-rank subspaces, ACL '17, <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1704.05358" target="_blank">https://arxiv.org/abs/1704.05358</a></p>
<p style="padding-left: 60px;">4. Prepositions in Context, preprint, <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1702.01466" target="_blank">https://arxiv.org/abs/1702.01466</a></p>
<hr /><p> </p>
<p>The <strong>Information Systems Laboratory Colloquium (ISLC)</strong> is typically held in Packard 101 every Thursday at 4:15 pm during the academic year. Refreshments are usually served after the talk.</p>
<p>The Colloquium is organized by graduate students Martin Zhang, Farzan Farnia, Reza Takapoui, and Zhengyuan Zhou. To suggest speakers, please contact any of the students.</p>
2017-05-04 23:15:00Pramod Viswanath (University of Illnois at Urbana-Champaign)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2486Evaluation of the Tensor Processing Unit: A Deep Neural Network Accelerator for the Datacenter [Special Seminar]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/evaluation-tensor-processing-unit-deep-neural-network-accelerator-datacenter-special
<p>With the ending of Moore's Law, many computer architects believe that major improvements in cost-energy-performance must now come from domain-specific hardware. The Tensor Processing Unit (TPU), deployed in Google datacenters since 2015, is a custom chip that accelerates deep neural networks (DNNs). We compare the TPU to contemporary server-class CPUs and GPUs deployed in the same datacenters. Our benchmark workload, written using the high-level TensorFlow framework, uses production DNN applications that represent 95% of our datacenters' DNN demand. The TPU is on average about 15X–30X faster than its contemporary GPU or CPU, with Performance/Watt 30X–80X higher.</p>
2017-05-04 23:00:00David Patterson (Google, Inc.)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2646Toward Real-Time Monitoring, Look-Ahead Assessment and Forecasting Engine for Active Distribution Networks [SmartGrid Seminar]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/toward-real-time-monitoring-look-ahead-assessment-and-forecasting-engine-active
<p>United Kingdom Power Networks (UKPN) provides power to a quarter of the UK's population via its electricity distribution networks in London that span to the east and southeast of England. This talk will present an advanced distribution analytics power network tool (ADAPT) codeveloped by BSI and UKPN. ADAPT is an advanced real-time monitoring, state estimation platform, contingency analysis, corrective control. In addition, look ahead platform (30 minutes to 2 hours ahead) offers look-ahead assessment of the network taking the uncertainties of renewable energy into account. ADAPT completes with energy forecasting tools which provide input into forecasting future system cases (e.g. 1 hour ahead to 24 hours ahead). ADAPT has several key features such as: State Estimation, Power flow, Contingency Analysis, Interactive Single Line Diagram (132 kV, 33 kV, and external connections), Energy forecaster for load, solar, and wind, Corrective control for removing violations in the system. The ADAPT platform provides operators and engineers real-time situational awareness and facilitates network reliability management as new distributed generation comes online. It also enhances the capability of outage planners to minimize constraints placed on the output from distributed generators during the summer maintenance season and during any major construction and reconfiguration activities. The Look-Ahead mode allows engineers to include the uncertainty of renewable output as well as energy forecasting to produce cases with new renewable contingencies and alternate dispatch cases. Some challenges faced during the development of ADAPT will also be presented. A by-product of the tool's analysis capabilities can also identify root causes of system and component power losses as well as ways to minimize them. Some challenges and theoretical issues faced during the development of ADAPT will also be presented.</p>
<hr /><p>This quarter's speakers are renowned experts in power and energy systems, and we believe they will bring novel insights and fruitful discussions to Stanford. This seminar is offered as a 1 unit seminar course, CEE 272T/EE292T for interested students. This course can be repeated for credit for the students.</p>
<p><strong>SmartGrid Seminar Organization Team:</strong></p>
<ul><li>Ram Rajagopal, Assistant Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering</li>
<li>Chin-Woo Tan, Director, Stanford Smart Grid Lab</li>
<li>Wenyuan Tang, Postdoctoral Scholar, Civil and Environmental Engineering</li>
<li>Yuting Ji, Postdoctoral Scholar, Civil and Environmental Engineering</li>
<li>Emre Kara, Associate Staff Scientist, SLAC</li>
</ul>2017-05-04 20:30:00Hsiao-Dong Chiang (Cornell University)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2574Internet of Things, Smart Plug Workshop Series [lab64 workshop]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/internet-things-smart-plug-workshop-series-lab64-workshop-1
<p>Workshop series – <strong><a href="https://docs.google.com/a/stanford.edu/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSci42RA3vKvyK2IpOaMTPWVJ2Y05UyCWrP2pOLCObeLWSd8VQ/viewform?c=0&amp;w=1" target="_blank">please RSVP</a>.</strong></p>
<p>We'll be running a four-workshop series on building an "<strong>Internet of Things</strong>" smart plug that you'll be able to use control power outlets remotely. And yes, you'll be able to keep it at the end.</p>
<p>Over the course of the workshops, you'll do everything from PCB layout to board assembly to embedded programming. All experience levels are welcome – we will teach you what you need to know (and there will be extensions for those with more experience and want to go further).</p>
<p>The workshops will be much more valuable for people who attend all four, but it will also be possible to participate if you can't make it every time. If you plan on attending the workshops, please RSVP with the following form: <a href="https://goo.gl/forms/bGRZF9CAsK3km93p1" target="_blank">https://goo.gl/forms/bGRZF9CAsK3km93p1</a></p>
2017-05-04 02:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2622Giovanni De Micheli (EPFL Laussane) [EE380 Computer Systems]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/giovanni-de-micheli-epfl-laussane-ee380-computer-systems
<p>TBA</p>
2017-05-03 23:30:00Giovanni De Micheli (EPFL Laussane)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2592Heterogeneous Computational Imaging [SCIEN Talk]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/heterogeneous-computational-imaging-scien-talk
<p>Modern systems-on-a-chip (SoC) have many different types of processors that could be used in computational imaging. Unfortunately, they all have different programming models, and are thus difficult to optimize as a system. In this talk we discuss various standards (OpenCL, OpenVX) and domain-specific programming languages (Halide, Proximal) that make it easier to accelerate processing for computational imaging.</p>
2017-05-03 23:30:00Dr. Kari Pulli (Meta)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2599Fuse: study nighthttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/fuse-study-night-31
<p>Spring quarter '17 study nights are every Tuesday at 7:00pm in the Fuse room (Packard 318).</p>
<p>Snacks will be provided to fuel good work. We hope to see you there!</p>
<p>-Fuse</p>
2017-05-03 02:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2630Ray Hatoyama (Sozo Ventures) [US-ATMC (EE402) Seminar]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/ray-hatoyama-sozo-ventures-us-atmc-ee402-seminar
<p>Our seminar series continues each Tuesday through May 30, 2017. Free parking after 4:00 pm on campus in designated areas – please read signs carefully. See <a href="http://asia.stanford.edu/?page_id=7818" target="_blank">http://asia.stanford.edu/?page_id=7818</a> for more information, including links to slides and videos of previous sessions and announcements of upcoming confirmed speakers.</p>
<p>Public welcome : no RSVP necessary : light refreshments</p>
2017-05-02 23:30:00Ray Hatoyama (Sozo Ventures)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2637A Research-validated Approach to Transforming upper-division Physics Courses [Applied Physics/Physics Colloquium]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/research-validated-approach-transforming-upper-division-physics-courses-applied
<p>TBA</p>
<hr /><p> </p>
<p>APPLIED PHYSICS/PHYSICS COLLOQUIUM</p>
<p>Held Tuesdays at 4:30 pm in the William R. Hewlett Teaching Center, room 200. Refreshments in the lobby of Varian Physics at 4:15 pm.</p>
<p>Winter 2016/2017, Committee: A. Linde (Chair), S. Kivelson, S. Zhang</p>
2017-05-02 23:15:00Steven Pollock (University of Colorado)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2606 Secrets of Successful Technology Start-ups [SystemX Seminar EE310]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/secrets-successful-technology-start-ups-systemx-seminar-ee310
<p>Start-up companies offer entrepreneurs fulfillment for their innovative product concepts, not to mention recognition and the promise of monetary rewards. However, no matter how well conceived or financed, most perish. Not because they lack great ideas, or aren't passionate enough or committed to their company and its products. Many of these companies succumb to the inexperience of the founding team and the people they subsequently bring aboard. Business schools have certainly helped distill the lessons of many successes and failures into a formulistic guideline for those intent on venturing forward. One wise sage offered, "A short cut to success is to emulate those who have succeeded". Today we will sample some insights and factors that propelled five consecutive Semiconductor startups towards success. All the companies built sizeable businesses and were rewarded by going public in the market place with an IPO.</p>
<hr /><p>The EE310 seminar series is intended to offer students a window onto the research directions of the SystemX industrial affiliates and associated faculty.</p>
<p>Offers a series of talks covering emerging topics in contemporary hardware/software systems design. Attention will be paid to the key building blocks of sensors, processing elements and wired/wireless communications, as well as their foundations in semiconductor technology, SoC construction, and physical assembly as informed by the SystemX Focus Areas. The series will draw upon distinguished engineering speakers from both industry and academia who are involved at all levels of the technology stack and the applications that are only now becoming possible.</p>
2017-04-27 23:30:00Paul Franklin (Independent)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2580Secrets of Successful Technology Start-ups that B-schools may have missed [SystemX Seminar]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/secrets-successful-technology-start-ups-b-schools-may-have-missed-systemx-seminar
<p>Start-up companies offer entrepreneurs fulfillment for their innovative product concepts, not to mention recognition and the promise of monetary rewards. However, no matter how well conceived or financed, most perish. Not because they lack great ideas, or aren't passionate enough or committed to their company and its products. Many of these companies succumb to the inexperience of the founding team and the people they subsequently bring aboard. Business schools have certainly helped distill the lessons of many successes and failures into a formulistic guideline for those intent on venturing forward. One wise sage offered, "A short cut to success is to emulate those who have succeeded". Today we will sample some insights and factors that propelled five consecutive Semiconductor startups towards success. All the companies built sizeable businesses and were rewarded by going public in the market place with an IPO.</p>
2017-04-27 23:30:00Paul Franklin (Independent Advisor)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2639When Exploration is Expensive -- Reducing and Bounding the Amount of Experience Needed to Learn to Make Good Decisions [ISL]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/when-exploration-expensive-reducing-and-bounding-amount-experience-needed-learn-make
<p>Understanding the limits of how much experience is needed to learn to make good decisions is both a foundational issue in reinforcement learning, and has important applications. Indeed, the potential to have artificial agents that help augment human capabilities, in the form of automated coaches or teachers, is enormous. Such reinforcement learning agents must explore in costly domains, since each experience comes from interacting with a human. I will discuss some of our recent theoretical results on sample efficient reinforcement learning.</p>
<hr /><p> </p>
<p>The <strong>Information Systems Laboratory Colloquium (ISLC)</strong> is typically held in Packard 101 every Thursday at 4:15 pm during the academic year. Refreshments are usually served after the talk.</p>
<p>The Colloquium is organized by graduate students Martin Zhang, Farzan Farnia, Reza Takapoui, and Zhengyuan Zhou. To suggest speakers, please contact any of the students.</p>
2017-04-27 23:15:00Emma Brunskill (Stanford)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2589Smart grids and energy systems [SmartGrid Seminar]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/smart-grids-and-energy-systems-smartgrid-seminar-0
<p>As the share of renewable energy becomes an increasing part of electricity generation, electric vehicles (EVs) have the potential to be used as virtual power plants (VPP) to provide reliable back-up power. This could generate additional profits for EV carsharing rental firms. We design a computational control mechanism for VPPs that decide whether EVs should be charging, discharging, or rented out. We validate our computational design by developing a discrete-event simulation platform based on real-time GPS information from 1,100 electric cars from Daimler's carsharing service Car2Go in San Diego, Amsterdam, and Stuttgart. We compute trading prices (bids and asks) for participating in secondary control reserve markets and investigate what effect the density of charging infrastructure, battery technology, and rental demand for vehicles have on the pay-off for the carsharing fleet. We show that VPPs can create sustainable revenue streams for electric vehicle carsharing fleets without compromising their rental business.</p>
<p>The theme of this quarter's Stanford SmartGrid seminar series is on smart grids and energy systems, scheduled to be held on Thursdays, with speakers from academic institutions and industry.</p>
<hr /><p>This quarter's speakers are renowned experts in power and energy systems, and we believe they will bring novel insights and fruitful discussions to Stanford. This seminar is offered as a 1 unit seminar course, CEE 272T/EE292T for interested students. This course can be repeated for credit for the students.</p>
<p><strong>SmartGrid Seminar Organization Team:</strong></p>
<ul><li>Ram Rajagopal, Assistant Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering</li>
<li>Chin-Woo Tan, Director, Stanford Smart Grid Lab</li>
<li>Wenyuan Tang, Postdoctoral Scholar, Civil and Environmental Engineering</li>
<li>Yuting Ji, Postdoctoral Scholar, Civil and Environmental Engineering</li>
<li>Emre Kara, Associate Staff Scientist, SLAC</li>
</ul>2017-04-27 20:30:00Wolfgang Ketter (Rotterdam School of Management)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2573Undergraduate Admit Weekendhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/ug-admit-weekend-2017
<p><strong>Welcome admitted students! </strong></p>
<p>Enjoy your time on campus and see you around the engineering quad.</p>
<ul><li>Information for EE's <a href="https://ee.stanford.edu/admissions/bs/prospective-undergrads">Prospective Undergraduates</a>.</li>
<li>Maker <a href="https://ee.stanford.edu/student-resources/lab64">lab64</a></li>
<li>EE <a href="https://ee.stanford.edu/admissions/bs">B.S. program</a> overview</li>
<li><a href="https://ee.stanford.edu/academics/reu">Research Experience</a> for Undergrads (REU)</li>
<li>EE <a href="https://ee.stanford.edu/spotlight">Spotlight</a> profiles</li>
</ul>2017-04-27 18:15:00 to 2017-04-29 19:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2628Internet of Things, Smart Plug Workshop Series [lab64 workshop]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/internet-things-smart-plug-workshop-series-lab64-workshop-0
<p>Workshop series – <strong><a href="https://docs.google.com/a/stanford.edu/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSci42RA3vKvyK2IpOaMTPWVJ2Y05UyCWrP2pOLCObeLWSd8VQ/viewform?c=0&amp;w=1" target="_blank">please RSVP</a>.</strong></p>
<p>We'll be running a four-workshop series on building an "<strong>Internet of Things</strong>" smart plug that you'll be able to use control power outlets remotely. And yes, you'll be able to keep it at the end.</p>
<p>Over the course of the workshops, you'll do everything from PCB layout to board assembly to embedded programming. All experience levels are welcome – we will teach you what you need to know (and there will be extensions for those with more experience and want to go further).</p>
<p>The workshops will be much more valuable for people who attend all four, but it will also be possible to participate if you can't make it every time. If you plan on attending the workshops, please RSVP with the following form: <a href="https://goo.gl/forms/bGRZF9CAsK3km93p1" target="_blank">https://goo.gl/forms/bGRZF9CAsK3km93p1</a></p>
2017-04-27 02:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2621Spacetime replication of continuous variable quantum information [IEEE Information Theory Society, Santa Clara Valley Chapter]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/general/spacetime-replication-continuous-variable-quantum-information-ieee-information-theory
<p>It is well known that no information can be transmitted faster than light, and it is also known that quantum information cannot be cloned or copied arbitrarily. These two "laws" place restrictions on the transmission of information through spacetime, but are there other limitations? The answer is no: the only such restrictions are (1) no-signalling (faster- than-light communication), and (2) no-cloning of quantum information. In this talk, This talk will first provide a brief introduction to some fundamentals of quantum information theory (including the no-cloning theorem and quantum error correction), and then it will show that any process that transmits information through spacetime without violating (1) or (2) is physically realizable as a so-called spacetime information replication task. In particular, this talk will describe how one can succeed at distributing information in seemingly impossible ways using quantum error correction, and showcase new, continuous variable quantum error correcting codes that can efficiently replicate information in spacetime.</p>
<p><strong>Agenda:</strong><br />6-6:30pm - Check-in, Refreshments &amp; Networking<br />6:30-7:30pm - <a href="http://ewh.ieee.org/r6/scv/its/MtgSum/Meeting2017_04.html" target="_blank">Detailed Abstract</a><br />7:30-7:45pm - Q&amp;A</p>
2017-04-27 01:00:00 to 2017-04-27 04:00:00Grant Salton (PhD Candidate, Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2611Software-centric Visible Light Communication for the Internet of Things [EE380 Computer Systems]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/software-centric-visible-light-communication-internet-things-ee380-computer-systems
<p>Visible Light Communication (VLC) based on LEDs for light emission and reception can be realized using simple components, delegating many of the "hard" problems to software. We present a software-centric approach that supports networking a wide range of devices -- devices that include only simple single LEDs (such as wearables, toys, consumer electronics) as well as LED light bulbs that run Linux and provide a VLC communication fabric (room-area network). One of the benefits of the software-centric approach is easy integration into distributed applications - a necessary condition for a pervasive communication infrastructure for the Internet of Things that requires a wide range of services (localization, time, authentication, etc).</p>
<p>Joint work with Stefan Mangold (Lovefield Wireless, Inc.) and Stefan Schmid (ETH Zurich).</p>
2017-04-26 23:30:00Tom Gross (ETH Zurich)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2591Deep Learning Imaging Applications [SCIEN Talk]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/deep-learning-imaging-applications-scien-talk
<p>Deep learning has driven huge progress in visual object recognition in the last five years, but this is one aspect of its application to imaging. This talk will provided a brief overview deep learning and artificial neural networks in computer vision, before delving into wide range of application Google has pursued in this area. Topics will include image summarization, image augmentation, artistic style transfer, and medical diagnostics.</p>
2017-04-26 23:30:00Dr. Greg Corrado (Google)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2598Fuse: study nighthttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/fuse-study-night-30
<p>Spring quarter '17 study nights are every Tuesday at 7:00pm in the Fuse room (Packard 318).</p>
<p>Snacks will be provided to fuel good work. We hope to see you there!</p>
<p>-Fuse</p>
2017-04-26 02:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2629Relentless: Forcing Impact through the Gauntlet of an Emerging Ecosystem [US-ATMC (EE402) Seminar]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/relentless-forcing-impact-through-gauntlet-emerging-ecosystem-us-atmc-ee402-seminar
<p>The Philippines has been the underachiever of South East Asia – a country teeming with potential, from the talent of its people to its stunning biodiversity. In this talk, serial entrepreneur Maoi Arroyo discusses how a boutique consulting firm she founded has worked with academia, government, investors, corporations, and startups to push innovations where they can make the most impact. Specializing in "inclusive innovations", Hybridigm Consulting, focuses on combining technology, business, and community development to increase average household net worth in a country where 85% of people live on less than $5 PPP. Her firm is now transforming into a startup studio and fund dedicated to eradicating poverty in the Philippines in a decade.</p>
<hr /><p> </p>
<p>This session is presented in cooperation with the Science and Technology Advisory Council of Silicon Valley (STAC-SV), which is dedicated to strengthening the tech ecosystem of the Philippines.</p>
2017-04-25 23:30:00Maoi Arroyo (Hybridigm)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2627Humanity&#039;s First Interstellar Mission [Applied Physics/Physics Colloquium]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/humanitys-first-interstellar-mission-applied-physicsphysics-colloquium
<p>All propulsion systems that leave the Earth are based on chemical reactions with a few adding ion engines. Chemical reactions, at best, have an efficiency compared to rest mass of 10<sup>-9</sup> (or about 1eV per bond). All the mass in the universe converted to chemical reactions would not propel even a single proton to relativistic speeds. While chemistry will get us to Mars, it will not allow interstellar capability in any reasonable mission time. Barring new physics, we are left with few solutions, other than science fiction and imaginary propulsion. Recent advances in photonics and directed energy systems now allow us to realize the possibility of relativistic flight. With spacecraft from fully-functional gram-level wafer-scale systems ("wafer sats") capable of speeds greater than c/4 that could reach the nearest star in 20 years to spacecraft for large missions capable of supporting human life with masses more than 10<sup>5</sup> kg (100 tons) for rapid interplanetary transit that could reach speeds of greater than 1000 km/s can be realized. With this technology spacecraft can be propelled to speeds currently unimaginable. Photonics, like electronics, and unlike chemical propulsion is an exponential technology with a current double time of about 20 months. It is this that is the key. In addition, the same photon driver can be used for many other purposes such as planetary defense, space debris vaporization and de-orbiting, beaming energy to distant spacecraft, beaming power for high I<sub>sp</sub> ion engine missions, asteroid mining, sending power back to Earth for high value needs, stand-off composition analysis, long range laser communications, SETI searches, kilometer class telescopes among others. This would be a profound change in human capability, one whose non-scientific implications would be enormous. Known as Starlight, NASA began our Phase I funding in April 2015. On April 12, 2016 the Breakthrough Foundation announced that they would support this effort with a 100M$ Research and Development program called Breakthrough Starshot that would explore the fundamental technology underlying this. On May 12, 2016 NASA announced Phase II funding. On May 23 the FY 2017 congressional appropriations request directs NASA to study the feasibility of an interstellar mission to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the moon landing using quoting our NASA program as one option. I will discuss the idea of relativistic flight generally, the many technical challenges ahead, our current laboratory prototypes and data as well as the transformative implications of this program.</p>
<hr /><p> </p>
<p>APPLIED PHYSICS/PHYSICS COLLOQUIUM</p>
<p>Held Tuesdays at 4:30 pm in the William R. Hewlett Teaching Center, room 200. Refreshments in the lobby of Varian Physics at 4:15 pm.</p>
<p>Winter 2016/2017, Committee: A. Linde (Chair), S. Kivelson, S. Zhang</p>
2017-04-25 23:15:00Phil Lubin (UC Santa Barbara)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2605 Wi-Fi The R/Evolution Continues [SystemX Seminar EE310]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/wi-fi-revolution-continues-systemx-seminar-ee310
<p>September 2015 marked the 25th anniversary of IEEE 802.11, commonly referred to as Wi-Fi. Over these 25 years, Wi-Fi has ascended from a technology that enabled computers to wirelessly transfer data at 2 Mbps to winning a spot in Maslow's pyramid as the most basic human need. IEEE 802.11 got here, as Lewis Carroll suggested, by running twice as fast. The standard has continuously advanced itself by introducing amendments, such as 802.11n, 802.11ac and 802.11ax. These amendments support higher data rates to meet ever-increasing application demands through the adoption of higher-order modulation schemes such as 64-, 256-, and 1024-QAM, by supporting channel bonding up to 160 MHz and by employing MIMO techniques to transmit multiple streams to single client. In addition to increasing the peak data rate, efforts have been made to improve the spectral efficiency, which characterizes how well the system uses the available spectrum. Multi-user techniques such as MU-MIMO and OFDMA have been introduced in 802.11ac and 802.11ax to improve spectral efficiency and network capacity.</p>
<p>This talk will provide an overview of the upcoming 802.11ax standard, particularly the features that enable it to achieve higher capacity. Given its ubiquitous presence, WiFi, by enabling indoor locationing, has also emerged as a tool to improve operational efficiency and engage with customers like never before. WiFi Alliance recently launched a certification program to deliver high accuracy indoor locationing. We will also provide a survey of WiFi-based indoor locationing technologies,as well as the applications enabled.</p>
<hr /><p> </p>
<p>The EE310 seminar series is intended to offer students a window onto the research directions of the SystemX industrial affiliates and associated faculty.</p>
<p>Offers a series of talks covering emerging topics in contemporary hardware/software systems design. Attention will be paid to the key building blocks of sensors, processing elements and wired/wireless communications, as well as their foundations in semiconductor technology, SoC construction, and physical assembly as informed by the SystemX Focus Areas. The series will draw upon distinguished engineering speakers from both industry and academia who are involved at all levels of the technology stack and the applications that are only now becoming possible.</p>
2017-04-20 23:30:00Sundar Sankaran (Ruckus)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2579Biology as Information Dynamics [IT forum]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/biology-information-dynamics-it-forum
<p>If biology is the study of self-replicating entities, and we want to understand the role of information, it makes sense to see how information theory is connected to the 'replicator equation' – a simple model of population dynamics for self-replicating entities. The relevant concept of information turns out to be the information of one probability distribution relative to another, also known as the Kullback-Liebler divergence. Using this we can get a new outlook on free energy, see evolution as a learning process, and give a clearer, more general formulation of Fisher's fundamental theorem of natural selection.</p>
2017-04-20 23:20:00John Baez (UC Riverside)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2601An information-theoretic perspective on interference management [ISL Colloquium]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/information-theoretic-perspective-interference-management-isl-colloquium
<p>For high data rates and massive connectivity, next-generation cellular networks are expected to deploy many small base stations. While such dense deployment provides the benefit of bringing radio closer to end users, it also increases the amount of interference from neighboring cells. Consequently, efficient and effective management of interference is expected to become one of the main challenges for high-spectral-efficiency, low-power, broad-coverage wireless communications.</p>
<p>In this talk, we introduce two competing paradigms of interference management and discuss recent developments in network information theory under these paradigms. In the first "distributed network" paradigm, the network consists of autonomous cells with minimal cooperation. We explore advanced channel coding techniques for the corresponding mathematical model of the "interference channel," focusing mainly on the sliding-window superposition coding scheme that achieves the performance of simultaneous decoding through point-to-point channel codes and low-complexity decoding. In the second "centralized network" paradigm, the network is a group of neighboring cells connected via backhaul links. For uplink and downlink communications over this "two-hop relay network," we develop dual coding schemes – noisy network coding and distributed decode-forward – that achieve capacity universally within a few bits per degree of freedom.</p>
2017-04-20 23:15:00Young-Han Kim (UCSD)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2625The Brain is a Unary Computer [Special Seminar]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/brain-unary-computer-special-seminar
<p>The cognitive brain (neocortex) performs computational tasks that far exceed the capabilities of conventional computer systems. Furthermore, it is very fast (considering its biological components) and extremely energy efficient.</p>
<p>As a model for neocortical operation, a broad class of spiking neural networks encode information with precise spike timing relationships across multiple parallel lines. These temporal neural networks then process information as a wave-front of spikes that sweeps forward through the neural network. At the outputs, results are encoded in a temporal format. The time it takes to compute a result is the result.</p>
<p>Recently proposed race logic performs computation using a feedforward network of AND gates, OR gates, and delays. Information is encoded as the times at which logic transitions take place; i.e. when logic levels change from 0 to 1. Computation is performed by initializing logic levels to 0. Then input values are encoded as 0 to 1 transition times, and these transitions sweep forward through the logic network. Output transition times encode the results. The time it takes to compute a result is the result.</p>
<p>A very broad family of temporal neural networks and a generalized form of race logic are isomorphic. One uses spike times for encoding information, the other uses logic transition times.</p>
<p>This means that we can design neural networks with widely-used spiking neuron models, and then implement them directly in hardware using conventional logic gates and design techniques. In the process, the speed and energy efficiency advantages are retained. Improvements versus conventional best-effort binary designs are: speedups of 2-3X and reduction in dynamic energy consumption of 10X or more. Furthermore, we can design certain other non-brain-like functions with similar improvements. Examples are sorting and graph long/short path problems.</p>
<p>The key principle is that time is used as a resource for communication and computation. Time is the ultimate physical resource. Time is freely available everywhere; it consumes no power and takes up no space. By using time as a physical implementation resource, we can use less of other physical resources, dynamic energy being the most significant.</p>
<p>Both temporal neural networks and generalized race logic are examples of spacetime computing paradigms. Spacetime computing, in turn, can be characterized by a unary algebra, that operates on unary encoded information using simple primitives: max, min, increment, inhibit. These primitives are complete with respect to the set functions computable by temporal neural networks and generalized race logic. So, if one accepts that temporal neural networks model the brain's operation, then the brain is a unary computer. And, by using generalized race logic we may eventually be able to achieve brain-like capabilities with conventional digital hardware.</p>
2017-04-20 22:00:00James E. Smith (Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2614Online Optimization of Virtual Power Plant [SmartGrid Seminar]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/online-optimization-virtual-power-plant-smartgrid-seminar
<p>Traditional approaches for regulating and maintaining system frequency in power transmission systems leverage primary frequency response, automatic generation control (AGC), and regulation services provided by synchronous generators. In the future, on the other hand, distributed energy resources (DERs) at both utility level and in commercial/residential settings are envisioned to complement traditional generation-side capabilities at multiple time scales to aid frequency regulation and maintaining a reliable system operation. Aligned with this emerging vision, this talk considers a distribution system featuring DERs, and presents a system-theoretic optimization strategy for DERs that enables a distribution feeder to emulate a virtual power plant effectively providing services to the main grid at multiple temporal scales. An online distributed algorithm for DERs is designed to enable the active and reactive power at the feeder head to track given setpoints (e.g, dispatch, ramp, or AGC signals), while concurrently ensuring that electrical quantities are within given limits throughout the feeder. The design of the online algorithm leverages primal-dual gradient methods applied to pertinent minimax problems, and its stability is analyzed under a time-varying optimization formalism. The talk will also demonstrates how individual DERs can provide primary frequency response; particularly, power-frequency droop slopes for individual DERs can be designed so that the distribution feeder presents a guaranteed frequency-regulation characteristic at the feeder head.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The theme of this quarter's Stanford SmartGrid seminar series is on smart grids and energy systems, scheduled to be held on Thursdays, with speakers from academic institutions and industry.</p>
<hr /><p>This quarter's speakers are renowned experts in power and energy systems, and we believe they will bring novel insights and fruitful discussions to Stanford. This seminar is offered as a 1 unit seminar course, CEE 272T/EE292T for interested students. This course can be repeated for credit for the students.</p>
<p><strong>SmartGrid Seminar Organization Team:</strong></p>
<ul><li>Ram Rajagopal, Assistant Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering</li>
<li>Chin-Woo Tan, Director, Stanford Smart Grid Lab</li>
<li>Wenyuan Tang, Postdoctoral Scholar, Civil and Environmental Engineering</li>
<li>Yuting Ji, Postdoctoral Scholar, Civil and Environmental Engineering</li>
<li>Emre Kara, Associate Staff Scientist, SLAC</li>
</ul>2017-04-20 20:30:00Emiliano Dall&#039;Anese (National Renewable Energy Laboratory)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2572Internet of Things, Smart Plug Workshop Series [lab64 workshop]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/internet-things-smart-plug-workshop-series-lab64-workshop
<p>Workshop series – <strong><a href="https://docs.google.com/a/stanford.edu/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSci42RA3vKvyK2IpOaMTPWVJ2Y05UyCWrP2pOLCObeLWSd8VQ/viewform?c=0&amp;w=1" target="_blank">please RSVP</a>.</strong></p>
<p>We'll be running a four-workshop series on building an "<strong>Internet of Things</strong>" smart plug that you'll be able to use control power outlets remotely. And yes, you'll be able to keep it at the end.</p>
<ul><li>The first workshop will be Wednesday, 4/19, from 7-9pm, and will continue the three following Wednesdays at the same time.</li>
</ul><p>Over the course of the workshops, you'll do everything from PCB layout to board assembly to embedded programming. All experience levels are welcome – we will teach you what you need to know (and there will be extensions for those with more experience and want to go further).</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The workshops will be much more valuable for people who attend all four, but it will also be possible to participate if you can't make it every time. If you plan on attending the workshops, please RSVP with the following form: <a href="https://goo.gl/forms/bGRZF9CAsK3km93p1" target="_blank">https://goo.gl/forms/bGRZF9CAsK3km93p1</a></p>
2017-04-20 02:00:00RSVP requiredhttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/2620PyWren - pushing microservices to teraflops [EE380 Computer Systems]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/pywren-pushing-microservices-teraflops-ee380-computer-systems
<p>Much of cloud computing infrastructure remains hard to use, in spite of decades of both academic research and commercialization. Fortunately, recent technologies developed for web services and internet startups can be repurposed to enable a much lower-friction scalable cloud experience. Our goal is making the power, elasticity, and dynamism of commercial cloud services like Amazon's EC2 accessible to busy applied physicists, electrical engineers, and data scientists, as well as a compelling new capability over Matlab, hopefully encouraging migration. We built PyWren, a transparent distributed execution engine on top of AWS Lambda, which hopefully simplifies many scale-out use cases for data science and computational imaging. We will demo applications built on our framework and seek user input into next directions.</p>
<p>Joint work with Shivaram Venkataraman, Qifan Pu, Ion Stoica, and Ben Recht.</p>
2017-04-19 23:30:00Eric Jonas (UC Berkeley)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2590Monitorless Workspaces and Operating Rooms of the Future: Virtual/Augmented Reality through Multiharmonic Lock-In Amplifiers [SCIEN Talk]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/monitorless-workspaces-and-operating-rooms-future-virtualaugmented-reality-through
<p>In my childhood I invented a new kind of lock-in amplifier and used it as the basis for the world's first wearable augmented reality computer (http://wearcam.org/par). This allowed me to see radio waves, sound waves, and electrical signals inside the human body, all aligned perfectly with the physical space in which they were present. I built this equipment into special electric eyeglasses that automatically adjusted their convergence and focus to match their surroundings. By shearing the spacetime continuum one sees a stroboscopic vision in coordinates in which the speed of light, sound, or wave propagation is exactly zero (http://wearcam.org/kineveillance.pdf), or slowed down, making these signals visible to radio engineers, sound engineers, neurosurgeons, and the like. See the attached picture of a violin attached to the desk in my office at Meta, where we're creating the future of computing based on Human-in-the-Loop Intelligence (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanistic_intelligence).</p>
<p> </p>
<p><a href="http://weartech.com/bio.htm" target="_blank">More Information: http://weartech.com/bio.htm</a></p>
2017-04-19 23:30:00Steve Mann (University of Toronto)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2597TomKat Center&#039;s Women in Sustainability Eventhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/tomkat-centers-women-sustainability-event
<p> </p>
<p><strong>Keynote:</strong> Fireside chat with Kat Taylor and Stacey Bent</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">Kat Taylor (JD/MBA) works towards a more equitable and inclusive world by championing social justice and environmental well-being through the advocacy of good money, good food, and good energy. She is the Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Beneficial State Bank, a Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) whose mission is to bring beneficial banking to low-income communities in an economically and environmentally sustainable manner. Kat is also a TomKat Center founding benefactor. (Yes, the Kat in TomKat).</p>
<p><strong>Panel:</strong> Moderated by Prof. Stacey Bent, Director, TomKat Center for Sustainable Energy</p>
<p><a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScpLKyO6ygyBa_zolLt7wYe-Y8ovrGp4f3AHoPizH_ZNmSRJQ/viewform?c=0&amp;w=1" target="_blank">Submit questions in advance</a></p>
<ul><li>Christine Su, PastureMap</li>
<li>Hedi Razavi, Keewi</li>
<li>Ugwem Eneyo, Solstice</li>
</ul><p> </p>
<p><strong><a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/women-entrepreneurs-in-sustainability-tickets-32196907818?utm_source=TomKat+Center+Mailing+List&amp;utm_campaign=65b15be2bf-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_04_07&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_term=0_24d6633edd-65b15be2bf-155592313" target="_blank">RSVP Required</a></strong> (Stanford students are given priority)<strong> </strong></p>
<p><em>Networking reception immediately following. </em></p>
2017-04-19 23:00:00 to 2017-04-20 00:00:00Sustainability Companies Founders Panelhttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/2585The Increasing Globalization of Asia Startups Outside China [US-ATMC (EE402) Seminar]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/increasing-globalization-asia-startups-outside-china-us-atmc-ee402-seminar
<p>This presentation discusses trends among startup companies in Asia outside of China that are beginning to globalize their business at earlier stages of development. It introduces their participation in channels for globalization, such as incubator and accelerator programs in Silicon Valley and also references Asia activities by Silicon Valley investors and mentors. What benefits can Silicon Valley achieve from the increased presence of Asia startups here?</p>
2017-04-18 23:30:00Chris Burry (US Market Access Center (US-MAC))https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2626In Search of Cosmic-Ray Antinuclei from Dark Matter [Applied Physics/Physics Colloquium]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/search-cosmic-ray-antinuclei-dark-matter-applied-physicsphysics-colloquium
<p>Cosmic-ray antiprotons have been a valuable tool for dark matter searches since the 1970's. Recent years have seen increased theoretical and experimental effort towards the first-ever detection of cosmic-ray antideuterons, in particular as an indirect signature of dark matter annihilation or decay in the Galactic halo. In contrast to other indirect detection signatures, which have been hampered by the large and uncertain background rates from conventional astrophysical processes, low-energy antideuterons provide an essentially background-free signature of dark matter, and low-energy antiprotons are a vital partner for this analysis. I will discuss the currently planned or ongoing experiments that will be sensitive to antideuteron flux levels predicted for dark matter, focusing on the balloon-borne GAPS experiment, which exploits a novel detection technique utilizing exotic atom capture and decay to provide both a sensitive antideuteron search and a precision antiproton measurement in an unprecedented low-energy range. I will finish by looking ahead to the tantalizing prospect of cosmic antihelium measurements, as a probe of both cosmic-ray and dark matter physics.</p>
2017-04-18 23:15:00Kerstin Perez (MIT)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2604Minimum Rates of Approximate Sufficient Statistics [IT-Forum]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/minimum-rates-approximate-sufficient-statistics-it-forum
<p>Given a sufficient statistic for a parametric family of distributions, one can estimate the parameter without access to the data itself but by using a sufficient statistic. However, the memory size for storing the sufficient statistic may be prohibitive. Indeed, for $n$ independent data samples drawn from a $k$-nomial distribution with $d=k-1$ degrees of freedom, the length of the code scales as $d\log n+O(1)$. In many applications though, we may not have a useful notion of sufficient statistics and also may not need to reconstruct the generating distribution exactly. By adopting an information-theoretic approach in which we consider allow a small error in estimating the generating distribution, we construct various notions of {\em approximate sufficient statistics} and show that the code length can be reduced to $\frac{d}{2}\log n + O(1)$. We consider errors measured according to the relative entropy and variational distance criteria. For the code construction parts, we leverage Rissanen's minimum description length principle, which yields a non-vanishing error measured using the relative entropy. For the converse parts, we use Clarke and Barron's asymptotic expansion for the relative entropy of a parametrized distribution and the corresponding mixture distribution. The limitation of this method is that only a weak converse for the variational distance can be shown. We develop new techniques to achieve vanishing errors and we also prove strong converses for all our statements. The latter means that even if the code is allowed to have a non-vanishing error, its length must still be at least $\frac{d}{2}\log n$.</p>
<p>This is joint work with Prof. Masahito Hayashi (Graduate School of Mathematics, Nagoya University and Center for Quantum Technologies, NUS</p>
<hr /><p> </p>
<p><strong>The Information Theory Forum (IT-Forum)</strong> at Stanford ISL is an interdisciplinary academic forum which focuses on mathematical aspects of information processing. With a primary emphasis on information theory, we also welcome researchers from signal processing, learning and statistical inference, control and optimization to deliver talks at our forum. We also warmly welcome industrial affiliates in the above fields. The forum is typically held in Packard 202 every Friday at 1:00 pm during the academic year.</p>
<p>The Information Theory Forum is organized by graduate students Jiantao Jiao and Yanjun Han. To suggest speakers, please contact any of the students.</p>
2017-04-17 20:15:00Vincent Y. F. Tan (National University of Singapore)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2484Tactical Grade Gyroscope Performance in a Consumer Grade Process [SystemX Seminar EE310]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/tactical-grade-gyroscope-performance-consumer-grade-process-systemx-seminar-ee310
<p>GPS has transformed navigation but unfortunately does not work in indoor or dense urban environments. The alternative, inertial navigation, is either too inaccurate or too large, power hungry, and costly in all but niche applications.</p>
<p>Gyroscopes are responsible for direction in inertial sensors. Since even small angular offsets can rapidly add up to large location errors, significantly improved gyroscope accuracy is the key to precise indoor navigation.</p>
<p>I will describe a prototype gyroscope with tactical grade performance. Unlike state-of-the-art solutions, the device does not rely on exotic fabrication technology or trimming, and both its size and power dissipation are comparable to existing mobile solutions.</p>
<p>How is this possible? Sensors, in general, compare their input to a reference. A thermometer compares its input to a reference temperature and reports the ratio. Gyroscope sensors have a huge advantage: their input is rate, degrees per second, also known as frequency. Frequency is the physical quantity that we can synthesize and measure with highest accuracy. While ppm-level precision is out-of-the-question for most properties, it is easily achieved for frequency.</p>
<p>Why then are gyroscopes not just as accurate as frequency sources? Oddly, present MEMS gyroscopes immediately turn frequency into force, then displacement, capacitance, voltage. Not only are these quantities difficult to measure with high accuracy, the scaling factors of all these transformations are subject to a myriad of fabrication and environmental variations. Not surprising that present gyroscopes suffer from a few errors.</p>
<p>The path to good gyroscopes is to measure frequency directly, without performance compromising detours. In this presentation, I will show you how.</p>
<hr /><p> </p>
<p>The EE310 seminar series is intended to offer students a window onto the research directions of the SystemX industrial affiliates and associated faculty.</p>
<p>Offers a series of talks covering emerging topics in contemporary hardware/software systems design. Attention will be paid to the key building blocks of sensors, processing elements and wired/wireless communications, as well as their foundations in semiconductor technology, SoC construction, and physical assembly as informed by the SystemX Focus Areas. The series will draw upon distinguished engineering speakers from both industry and academia who are involved at all levels of the technology stack and the applications that are only now becoming possible.</p>
<ul><li>April 13: Tactical Grade Gyro in a Consumer Grade Process Bernhard Boser (UC Berkeley)</li>
<li>April 20: Wi-Fi The R/Evolution Continues Sundar Sankaran (Ruckus)</li>
<li>April 27: Secrets of Successful Technology Start-ups Paul Franklin (Independent)</li>
<li>May 04: Dynamics of Exponentials in Circuits and Systems Ahmad Bahai (TI)</li>
</ul>2017-04-13 23:30:00Bernhard Boser (UC Berkeley)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2578Smart grids and energy systems [SmartGrid Seminar]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/smart-grids-and-energy-systems-smartgrid-seminar
<p>Semidefinite Programming is met with increasing interest within the power systems community. Its most notable application to-date is a convex formulation of the AC optimal power flow problem. At the same time, semidefinite programs can be applied on LMI conditions to derive Lyapunov functions that guarantee power system stability. In this talk we will report on recent work both on power system stability and optimization. First, we will present a novel robust stability toolbox for power grid with its extensions to inertia mimicking and topology control. In that, the quadratic Lyapunov functions approach is introduced for transient stability assessment. Second, we will propose formulations for the integration of chance constraints for different types of uncertainty in the AC optimal power flow problem. We demonstrate our method with numerical examples, and we investigate the conditions to achieve zero relaxation gap.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The theme of this quarter's Stanford SmartGrid seminar series is on smart grids and energy systems, scheduled to be held on Thursdays, with speakers from academic institutions and industry.</p>
<hr /><p>This quarter's speakers are renowned experts in power and energy systems, and we believe they will bring novel insights and fruitful discussions to Stanford. This seminar is offered as a 1 unit seminar course, CEE 272T/EE292T for interested students. This course can be repeated for credit for the students.</p>
<p><strong>SmartGrid Seminar Organization Team:</strong></p>
<ul><li>Ram Rajagopal, Assistant Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering</li>
<li>Chin-Woo Tan, Director, Stanford Smart Grid Lab</li>
<li>Wenyuan Tang, Postdoctoral Scholar, Civil and Environmental Engineering</li>
<li>Yuting Ji, Postdoctoral Scholar, Civil and Environmental Engineering</li>
<li>Emre Kara, Associate Staff Scientist, SLAC</li>
</ul>2017-04-13 20:30:00Spyros Chatzivasileiadis (Technical University of Denmark)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2571Capturing the “Invisible”: Computational Imaging for Robust Sensing and Vision [SCIEN]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/capturing-%25E2%2580%259Cinvisible%25E2%2580%259D-computational-imaging-robust-sensing-and-vision-scien
<p>Imaging has become an essential part of how we communicate with each other, how autonomous agents sense the world and act independently, and how we research chemical reactions and biological processes. Today's imaging and computer vision systems, however, often fail in critical scenarios, for example in low light or in fog. This is due to ambiguity in the captured images, introduced partly by imperfect capture systems, such as cellphone optics and sensors, and partly present in the signal before measuring, such as photon shot noise. This ambiguity makes imaging with conventional cameras challenging, e.g. low-light cellphone imaging, and it makes high-level computer vision tasks difficult, such as scene segmentation and understanding.</p>
<p>In this talk, I will present several examples of algorithms that computationally resolve this ambiguity and make sensing and vision systems robust. These methods rely on three key ingredients: accurate probabilistic forward models, learned priors, and efficient large-scale optimization methods. In particular, I will show how to achieve better low-light imaging using cell-phones (beating Google's HDR+), and how to classify images at 3 lux (substantially outperforming very deep convolutional networks, such as the Inception-v4 architecture). Using a similar methodology, I will discuss ways to miniaturize existing camera systems by designing ultra-thin, focus-tunable diffractive optics. Finally, I will present new exotic imaging modalities which enable new applications at the forefront of vision and imaging, such as seeing through scattering media and imaging objects outside direct line of sight.</p>
2017-04-12 23:30:00Felix Head (Stanford)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2587Self-Driving Networks Workshop [ISL]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/general/self-driving-networks-workshop-isl
<p>Networks have become very complex over the past decade. The users and operators of large cloud platforms and campus networks have desired a much more programmable network infrastructure to meet the dynamic needs of different applications and reduce the friction they can cause to each other. This has culminated in the Software-­‐defined Networking paradigm. But you cannot program what you do not understand: the volume, velocity and richness of network applications and traffic seem beyond the ability of direct human comprehension. What is needed is a sensing, inference and learning system which can observe the data emitted by a network during the course of its operation, reconstruct the network's evolution, infer key performance metrics, continually learn the best responses to rapidly-­‐changing load and operating conditions, and help the network adapt to them in real-­‐time. The workshop brings together academic and industry groups interested in the broad themes of this topic. It highlights ongoing research at Stanford and describes initial prototype systems and results from pilot deployments.</p>
2017-04-12 07:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2568Controlling and Exploring Quantum Matter Using Ultracold Atoms in Optical Lattices [Applied Physics/Physics Colloquium]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/controlling-and-exploring-quantum-matter-using-ultracold-atoms-optical-lattices
<p>More than 30 years ago, Richard Feynman outlined the visionary concept of a quantum simulator for carrying out complex physics calculations. Today, his dream has become a reality in laboratories around the world. In my talk I will focus on the remarkable opportunities offered by ultracold quantum gases trapped in optical lattices to address fundamental physics questions ranging from condensed matter physics over statistical physics to high energy physics with table-top experiment.</p>
<p>For example, I will show how it has now become possible to image and control quantum matter with single atom sensitivity and single site resolution, thereby allowing one to directly image individual quantum fluctuations of a many-body system, to directly reveal antiferromagnetic order in the fermionic Hubbard model or hidden 'topological order'. I will also show, how recent experiments with cold gases in optical lattices have enabled to realise and probe artificial magnetic fields that lie at the heart of topological energy bands in a solid, including Thouless charge pumps in multiple dimensions. Finally, I will discuss our recent experiments on novel many-body localised states of matter that challenge our understanding of the connection between statistical physics and quantum mechanics at a fundamental level.</p>
2017-04-11 23:30:00Immanuel Bloch (Max-Planck Institut für Quantenoptik)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2584Living in Information Everywhere [EE380 Computer Systems Colloquium]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/general/living-information-everywhere-ee380-computer-systems-colloquium
<p>The term cloud computing increasingly describes not just the technology of large networked data centers, but is a proxy term for the unification of smartphones, apps, IoT, Big Data, and Artificial Intelligence -- in effect, the deployment of computational intelligence to virtually every point on the planet. One may view this as a fulfillment of Moore's Law, or the start of decades-long project that is likely to reshape civilization. As someone who both covers this topic and has been profoundly affected by it, I will speak about the technology, and what historical parallels tell us about the likely impact.</p>
2017-04-10 22:10:00 to 2017-04-10 23:10:00Quentin Hardy (Google Cloud)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2588Biosciences and EE Student Mixerhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/biosciences-and-ee-student-mixer
<p>We have a special HappEE Hour / student mixer with the Stanford Biosciences Student Association. The fare and vibe will be familiar, but there will be a bunch of new faces and it will be over on the Dean's Lawn in the Medical School, just a short walk from the EE buildings.</p>
<p>In case of rain, or otherwise inclement weather, the backup location will be the Packard Atrium.</p>
2017-04-08 00:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2586Beneath the Surface – Engineering Innovation inside Microsoft’s Surface Book [SystemX Seminar EE310]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/beneath-surface-%25E2%2580%2593-engineering-innovation-inside-microsoft%25E2%2580%2599s-surface-book-systemx
<p>The EE310 seminar series is intended to offer students a window onto the research directions of the SystemX industrial affiliates and associated faculty.</p>
<p>Offers a series of talks covering emerging topics in contemporary hardware/software systems design. Attention will be paid to the key building blocks of sensors, processing elements and wired/wireless communications, as well as their foundations in semiconductor technology, SoC construction, and physical assembly as informed by the SystemX Focus Areas. The series will draw upon distinguished engineering speakers from both industry and academia who are involved at all levels of the technology stack and the applications that are only now becoming possible.</p>
<ul><li>April 06: Beneath the Surface, Ed Giaimo (Microsoft)</li>
<li>April 13: Tactical Grade Gyro in a Consumer Grade Process Bernhard Boser (UC Berkeley)</li>
<li>April 20: Wi-Fi The R/Evolution Continues Sundar Sankaran (Ruckus)</li>
<li>April 27: Secrets of Successful Technology Start-ups Paul Franklin (Independent)</li>
<li>May 04: Dynamics of Exponentials in Circuits and Systems Ahmad Bahai (TI)</li>
</ul>2017-04-06 23:30:00Ed Giaimo (Microsoft)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2560 Power System Reliability with Integration of a Diverse Fleet of Generation Resources [SmartGrid Seminar]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/power-system-reliability-integration-diverse-fleet-generation-resources-smartgrid
<p>The electric power system has been experiencing a shift in its generation resource mix resulting from the retirement of conventional base load synchronous resources and the integration of a more diverse fleet of smaller sized resources with varying generation characteristics. As this transformation continues, there is a fundamental shift in the operational characteristics of the power system as a whole and thus potential reliability implications. In 2014, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) created a task force on Essential Reliability Services (ERS) to identify the necessary operating characteristics to assure reliable operations of the North American electric grid. By 2015 frequency, voltage, and net demand ramping variability were recognized as the three essential building blocks of reliability. In December 2016, a paper on ERS sufficiency guidelines include frequency response, voltage limits, and ramping models that tend to vary by particular area and Balancing Authority. The ERS task force also studied the potential impact of a substantial penetration of distributed energy resources (DERs) that, in aggregate, could impact the reliability of the BPS. This industry presentation will focus on the measures identified by the ERS working group, and highlight the results from analysis performed using three years of historical data and three years of forward looking data. Additionally, an overview of the analysis performed by DER task force will be provided.</p>
<hr /><p>This quarter's speakers are renowned experts in power and energy systems, and we believe they will bring novel insights and fruitful discussions to Stanford. This seminar is offered as a 1 unit seminar course, CEE 272T/EE292T for interested students. This course can be repeated for credit for the students.</p>
<p><strong>SmartGrid Seminar Organization Team:</strong></p>
<ul><li>Ram Rajagopal, Assistant Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering</li>
<li>Chin-Woo Tan, Director, Stanford Smart Grid Lab</li>
<li>Wenyuan Tang, Postdoctoral Scholar, Civil and Environmental Engineering</li>
<li>Yuting Ji, Postdoctoral Scholar, Civil and Environmental Engineering</li>
<li>Emre Kara, Associate Staff Scientist, SLAC</li>
</ul>2017-04-06 20:30:00Nicole Segal (North American Electric Reliability Corporation)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2570Practical Computer Vision for Self-Driving Cars [SCIEN]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/practical-computer-vision-self-driving-cars-scien-0
<p>Cruise is developing and testing a fleet of self driving cars on the streets of San Francisco. Getting these cars to drive is a hard engineering and science problem - this talk explains roughly how self driving cars work and how computer vision, from camera hardware to deep learning, helps make a self driving car go.</p>
<p>More Information: <a href="https://www.getcruise.com/" target="_blank">https://www.getcruise.com/</a><br />see also <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2017/1/19/14327954/gm-self-driving-car-cruise-chevy-bolt-video" target="_blank">http://www.theverge.com/2017/1/19/14327954/gm-self-driving-car-cruise-chevy-bolt-video</a></p>
2017-04-05 23:30:00Peter Gao (Cruise Automation)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2565Neuromorphic Chips: Addressing the Nanostransistor Challenge by Combining Analog Computation with Digital Communication [EE380 Computer Systems Colloquium]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/neuromorphic-chips-addressing-nanostransistor-challenge-combining-analog-computation
<p>As transistors shrink to nanoscale dimensions, trapped electrons--blocking "lanes" of electron traffic--are making it difficult for digital computers to work. In stark contrast, the brain works fine with single-lane nanoscale devices that are intermittently blocked (ion channels). Conjecturing that it achieves error-tolerance by combining analog dendritic computation with digital axonal communication, neuromorphic engineers (neuromorphs) began emulating dendrites with subthreshold analog circuits and axons with asynchronous digital circuits in the mid-1980s. Three decades in, they achieved a consequential scale with Neurogrid, the first neuromorphic system with billions of synaptic connections. Neuromorphs then tackled the challenge of mapping arbitrary computations onto neuromorphic chips in a manner robust to lanes intermittently--or even permanently--blocked by trapped electrons. Having demonstrated scalability and programmability, they now seek to encode continuous signals with spike trains in a manner that promises greater energy efficiency than all-analog or all-digital computing across a five-decade precision range.</p>
2017-04-05 23:30:00Kwabena Boahen (Stanford)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2583Carnot’s Engine, Bernoulli’s Pump, and Turing’s Machine - Some clues to realization of ideal computinghttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/carnot%25E2%2580%2599s-engine-bernoulli%25E2%2580%2599s-pump-and-turing%25E2%2580%2599s-machine-some-clues-realization-ideal
<p>Energy or Power minimization is a universal macro-constraint for on-chip architectures. The computer industry is actively dealing with trade-offs between performance and energy efficiency. Currently, the traditional way of scaling as per Moore's law reduces the critical dimensions of device with every generation of the technology. However, as the energy or power per switching operation is not scaling down the size, a newer technology does not directly translate to substantial advantage to our products. In addition, based on our estimates, the energy per operation (active power) is still about 104 higher than the thermodynamic limit of a binary switch.</p>
<p>The intent of this work is to develop theoretical concepts for bridging architectures with energy efficient computing. We evaluate the efficiency of an ideal computing architecture at the limits of scaling. We achieve this by using concepts from thermodynamics, classical mechanics, and quantum mechanics for simplified computing systems. Although efforts have been undertaken on scalability of single devices, we believe that this is the first attempt to estimate energy in large computing systems and in a single switch using the same physical principles. Similar to design of heat engines, we hope that these concepts will help in evaluating different chip architectures and compare them to a limiting and ideal computing engine. As a larger conclusion, we will also explore possibilities of reversible computing from this perspective and contrast it with Landauer- based estimate of switching energy.</p>
2017-04-05 18:00:00Sadasivan (Sadas) Shankar (Harvard Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2569Asia Entrepreneurship Update 2017: Current Ecosystem Trends [US-ATMC (EE402) Seminar]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/asia-entrepreneurship-update-2017-current-ecosystem-trends-us-atmc-ee402-seminar
<p>In this talk, <a href="https://profiles.stanford.edu/richard-dasher" target="_blank"><strong>Professor Richard Dasher</strong></a> will introduce new (updated) data and discuss trends in entrepreneurism and in various aspects of the supporting ecosystems for startup companies in major Asian economies.</p>
<hr /><p>We will be continuing our seminar series each Tuesday through May 2017. Additional details to be announced shortly.</p>
<p>Public welcome : no RSVP necessary : light refreshments</p>
2017-04-04 23:30:00Peng T. Ong (Monk&#039;s Hill Ventures)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2549Presence of Quantum Diffusion in Two Dimensions [Applied Physics/Physics Colloquium]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/presence-quantum-diffusion-two-dimensions-applied-physicsphysics-colloquium
<p>All condensed matter systems possess disorder and interaction effects. Still, the qualitative effects of disorder and interactions in quantum systems are poorly understood. This is especially true when it comes to electrical conduction. The standard theory, developed for non-interacting particles over 40 years ago, predicted surprisingly that for the most part, disorder destroys metallic behavior in two-dimensional (2d) systems at zero temperature. For many decades, this "absence of quantum diffusion in 2d" was taken to be scientific law. However, with strong interactions, there is no reason to believe that this dogma survives.</p>
<p>I will review the experiments that have challenged this conventional wisdom, and will describe ongoing theoretical efforts to establish that metallic ground states can occur in 2d due to strong interaction effects.</p>
2017-04-04 23:30:00Sri Raghu (Stanford)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2566Spring Quarter Beginshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/general/spring-quarter-begins
<p>Classes begin, spring 2017. </p>
2017-04-03 07:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2576Special Seminar: Kanaka Rajan Biophysics Theory Fellow at Princeton Universityhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/special-seminar-kanaka-rajan-biophysics-theory-fellow-princeton-university
<p class="p1">Behavior arises from neural circuits that are enormously complex dynamic systems. A major goal in neuroscience is to characterize the essential components of these dynamics and to understand how they are generated by the biophysics of neurons and synapses. Toward this goal, I will describe network models that reveal basic features of neural circuit function. In one example, a model of posterior parietal cortex based on calcium imaging data is used to identify the degree of synaptic modification required to generate sequential neural activity through a novel mechanism involving a mixture of input-driven and internal dynamics. In a second example, a model of evidence accumulation reveals an unexpected nonlinear transformation in the representation of the integrated signal, a result verified by comparison with behavioral data. I will also discuss how the development of these models is informed by contributions I have made to random matrix theory and by the use of statistical physics to analyze network dynamics. To conclude my talk, I will discuss four directions where I believe theoretical advances, particularly in collaboration with experimental discoveries, will generate important new insights: Neural sequences as a novel substrate for memory-based and repetitive actions; Acquisition and implementation of cognitive maps to represent abstract contextual variables; Generating and testing hypotheses for computational strategies used by brain circuits; and Developing unsupervised and rewardbased learning procedures to model biological mechanisms of learning.</p>
2017-03-27 17:00:00Kanaka Rajan (Princeton University)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2554Special Seminar: Guosong Hong Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard Universityhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/special-seminar-guosong-hong-postdoctoral-fellow-harvard-university
<p>Nanomanufacturing in the semiconductor industry is driven by our ability to rapidly process and manipulate materials into their required forms. This seminar will highlight some of our work to develop materials for the semiconductor field and beyond. First, core-shell ferrimagnetic nanoparticles (FMNPs) developed for self-assembled magnetic storage media will be presented. While FMNPs are susceptible to magnetically induced aggregation, nanoparticles coated with a diblock copolymer are stable in solution and can easily be processed as thin films. As a result, these core-shell particles are suitable for investigating self-assembly processes for creating prototype magnetic media. Next, a simple and facile strategy for high-throughput directed selfassembly of nanoparticles on lithographically defined substrates via spin-coating will be presented. The two-dimensional arrangements of nanoparticles were formed deterministically in just 30 seconds by the strategic placement of topographical features on a substrate. Finally, the integration of dynamic covalent chemistry into nanoimprint lithography will be discussed. Reversible Diels-Alder chemistry was utilized to transfer features onto an aliphatic polycarbonate film in the presence of a silicon master and heat.</p>
2017-03-23 17:00:00Guosong Hong (Harvard University)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2553ARRIScope - A new era in surgical microscopy [SCIEN]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/arriscope-new-era-surgical-microscopy-scien
<p>The continuous increase in performance and the versatility of ARRI´s digital motion picture camera systems led to our development of the first fully digital stereoscopic operating microscope, the ARRISCOPE. For the last 18 months' multiple units have been used in clinical trials at renowned clinics in the field of Otology in Germany.<br />During our presentation we will cover the obstacles, initial applications and future potentials of 3D camera based surgical microscopes and give an insight into the technical preconditions and advantages of the digital imaging chain. In conclusion of the presentation, examples of different surgical procedures recorded with the ARRISCOPE and near future augmented and virtual reality 3D applications will be demonstrated.</p>
<p><strong>More Information:</strong> <a href="http://www.arrimedical.com/" target="_blank">http://www.arrimedical.com/</a></p>
<p> </p>
2017-03-22 23:30:00Dr. Hans Kiening (Arnold &amp; Richter Cine Technik)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2534Insensitivity of Loss Systems under Randomized SQ(d) Algorithms [ISL Colloquium]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/insensitivity-loss-systems-under-randomized-sqd-algorithms-isl-colloquium
<p>In many applications such as cloud computing, managing server farm resources etc. an incoming task or job has to be matched with an appropriate server in order to minimise the latency or blocking associated with the processing. Ideally the best choice would be to match a job to the fastest available server. However when there are thousands of servers requiring the information on all server tasks is an overkill.</p>
<p>Pioneered in the 1990's the idea of randomised sampling of a few servers was proposed by Vvedenskaya and Dobrushin in Russia and Mitzmenmacher in the US and popularised as the "power of two" schemes which basically means that sampling two servers randomly and sending the job to the "better" server (i.e. with the shortest queue, or most resources) provides most of the benefits of sampling all the servers.</p>
<p>In the talk I will discuss multi-server loss models under power-of-d routing scheme when service time distributions are general with finite mean. Previous works on these models assume that the service times are exponentially distributed and insensitivity was suggested through simulations. Showing insensitivity to service time distributions has remained an open problem. We address this problem by considering service time distributions as Mixed-Erlang distributions that are dense in the class of general distributions on (0, ∞). We derive the mean field equations (MFE) of the empirical distributions for the system and establish the existence and uniqueness of the fixed point of the MFE. Furthermore we show that the fixed point of the MFE corresponds to the fixed point obtained from the MFE corresponding to a system with exponential service times showing that the fixed point is insensitive to the distribution. Due to lack of uniformity of the mixed-Erlang convergence the true general case needs to be handled differently. I will conclude the case of the MFE with general service times showing that the MFE is now characterized by a pde whose stationary point coincides with the fixed point in the case with exponential service times.The techniques developed in this paper are applicable to study mean field limits for Markov processes on general state spaces and insensitivity properties of other queueing models.</p>
2017-03-20 22:00:00Ravi R. Mazumdar (University of Waterloo, Canada)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2544Final Exam Weekhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/final-exam-week
<p>Final Exam Week, Winter quarter 2017.</p>
2017-03-20 16:00:00 to 2017-03-25 00:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2521Brain-machine interfaces as a platform technology for neurological disorders [SystemX Seminar]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/brain-machine-interfaces-platform-technology-neurological-disorders-systemx-seminar
<p>To date, the scope of brain-machine interfaces (BMIs) has largely been to restore lost function to people with paralysis stemming from conditions such as neurodegenerative disease and spinal cord injury. These systems interface with the brain using neurosurgically implanted electrodes, measure the voltage of individual and groups of neurons, and translate these measurements via a decoding algorithm to control an end effector such as a computer cursor. I will discuss work performed in preclinical rhesus models that led to the highest performing communication BMI demonstrated to date, as well as recent results of an ongoing clinical trial where these preclinical algorithmic innovations have been successfully translated to a human participant, again yielding the highest communication rates of any known clinical BMI.</p>
<p>The example of prosthetics is just one important application leveraging intracortical BMIs as a platform for accurately assessing and acting on the neural state. However, these measurements could play a crucial role in the diagnosis and management of a wide range of brain-related diseases and disorders. Just as EEG recordings help localize seizures both temporally and spatially, and MRI imaging provides morphological and gross functional evaluations of the brain, BMI systems may reveal previously unrecognized disease-specific adulterations in the neural state. Not only could this aid in forming better prognoses, but may also lead to interventions to prevent or alleviate undesirable symptoms and improve rehabilitation. In this manner, the utility of BMIs could extend beyond communication or motor prosthetics to become an indispensable clinical tool in the treatment of brain disorders. I will discuss the emerging potential and key initial steps of this new class of medical system.</p>
2017-03-16 23:30:00 Prof. Paul Nuyujukian (Stanford University)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2537Anonymity in the Bitcoin Peer-to-Peer Network [ISL Colloquium]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/anonymity-bitcoin-peer-peer-network-isl-colloquium
<p>Bitcoin enjoys a public perception of being a privacy-preserving financial system. In reality, Bitcoin has a number of privacy vulnerabilities, including the well-studied fact that transactions can be linked through the public blockchain. More recently, researchers have demonstrated deanonymization attacks that exploit a lower-layer weakness: the Bitcoin peer-to-peer (P2P) networking stack. In particular, the P2P network currently forwards content in a structured way that allows observers to deanonymize users by linking their transactions to the originating IP addresses. In this work, we first demonstrate that current protocols exhibit poor anonymity guarantees, both theoretically and in practice. Then, we consider a first-principles redesign of the P2P network, with the goal of providing strong, provable anonymity guarantees. We propose a simple networking policy called Dandelion, which achieves nearly-optimal anonymity guarantees at minimal cost to the network's utility.</p>
2017-03-16 23:15:00Dr. Giulia Fanti (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2542Vincent Poor, Princeton University [SmartGrid]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/vincent-poor-princeton-university-smartgrid
<p>Smart grid involves the imposition of an advanced cyber layer atop the physical layer of the electricity grid, in order to improve the efficiency, security and cost of electricity use and distribution, and to allow for greater decentralization of power generation and management. This cyber-physical setting motivates a number of problems in network analysis, and this talk will briefly describe several of these problems together with approaches to solving them. These include competitive privacy in which multiple grid entities seek an optimal trade-off between privacy lost and utility gained from information sharing; distributed inference in which both the cyber and physical network topologies have roles to play in achieving consensus; real-time topology identification which helps in the mitigation of cascading failures; and attack construction which seeks an understanding of optimal strategies for attacking the grid in support of the design of effective countermeasures.</p>
<hr /><p> </p>
<p>The SmartGrid seminar is scheduled at 1:30 pm on various dates throughout the Winter quarter. These speakers are renowned experts in power and energy systems, and we believe they will bring novel insights and fruitful discussions to Stanford. This seminar is offered as a 1 unit seminar course, CEE 272T/EE292T for interested students. This course can be repeated for credit for the students.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p><em>Yours sincerely,</em></p>
<p><em>SmartGrid Seminar Organization Team,</em></p>
<p><em>Ram Rajagopal, Assistant Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering</em><br /><em>Chin-Woo Tan, Director, Stanford Smart Grid Lab</em><br /><em>Wenyuan Tang, Postdoctoral Scholar, Civil and Environmental Engineering</em><br /><em>Emre Kara, Associate Staff Scientist, SLAC</em></p>
2017-03-16 20:30:00Vincent Poor (Princeton University)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2481New Directions in Management Science &amp; Engineering: A Brief History of the Virtual Labhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/new-directions-management-science-engineering-brief-history-virtual-lab
<p>Lab experiments have long played an important role in behavioral science, in part because they allow for carefully designed tests of theory, and in part because randomized assignment facilitates identification of causal effects. At the same time, lab experiments have traditionally suffered from numerous constraints (e.g. short duration, small-scale, unrepresentative subjects, simplistic design, etc.) that limit their external validity. In this talk I describe how the web in general—and crowdsourcing sites like Amazon's Mechanical Turk in particular—allow researchers to create "virtual labs" in which they can conduct behavioral experiments of a scale, duration, and realism that far exceed what is possible in physical labs. To illustrate, I describe some recent experiments that showcase the advantages of virtual labs, as well as some of the limitations. I then discuss how this relatively new experimental capability may unfold in the future, along with some implications for social and behavioral science.</p>
2017-03-16 19:15:00Duncan Watts (Microsoft Research NYC; Cornell University)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2547The Future of Computer Architecture (Patterson and Hennessy) [EE380 Computer Systems Colloquium &amp; EE180]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/future-computer-architecture-patterson-and-hennessy-ee380-computer-systems-colloquium
<p><strong>About the Panel/Q&amp;A (11:30-12:00): </strong>The Future of Computer Architecture (Patterson and Hennessy)</p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>General Information: </strong>This presentation is the last lecture of EE180 for Winter 2017. The lecture is open to the public. The lecture will not be video recorded nor available on the web.</p>
<p>EE380 students and attendees are urged to attend this lecture, but it is optional. It cannot be substituted for one of the ten required EE380 lectures.</p>
<p> </p>
2017-03-16 18:30:00 to 2017-03-16 19:00:00David Patterson (Google) and John Hennessy (Knight-Hennessy Scholars Program)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/251650 Years in the Making: The Open RISC-V Instruction Set architecture [EE380 Computer Systems Colloquium &amp; EE180]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/50-years-making-open-risc-v-instruction-set-architecture-ee380-computer-systems
<p><strong>About the talk (10:30-11:30):</strong><br />We start by reviewing 50 years of computer architecture to show there is now widespread agreement on instruction set architecture (ISA). Unlike other fields, despite this harmony there is no open alternative to proprietary offerings from ARM and Intel. Our champion is RISC-V, whose foundation has been joined by nearly every hi-tech company (except for the two with popular proprietary ISAs). We continue the discussion by focusing on the challenges ahead as IC technology slows down, older architectural approaches face diminishing returns, and the needs of users change dramatically.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>General Information: </strong>This presentation is the last lecture of EE180 for Winter 2017. The lecture is open to the public. The lecture will not be video recorded nor available on the web.</p>
<p>EE380 students and attendees are urged to attend this lecture, but it is optional. It cannot be substituted for one of the ten required EE380 lectures.</p>
<p> </p>
2017-03-16 17:30:00 to 2017-03-16 18:30:00David Patterson (Google) and John Hennessy (Knight-Hennessy Scholars Program)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2541Felix Heide (Stanford) [SCIEN]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/felix-heide-stanford-scien
<p><span><strong>The Stanford Center for Image Systems Engineering (SCIEN)</strong> is a partnership between the Stanford School of Engineering and technology companies developing imaging systems for the enhancement of human communication.</span></p>
2017-03-15 23:30:00Felix Heide (Stanford)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2465Autonomous Driving, are we there yet? - technology, business, legal considerations [EE380]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/autonomous-driving-are-we-there-yet-technology-business-legal-considerations-ee380
<p>Autonomous driving is arguably one of the most anticipated topics in the tech community. It is pivotal to one of the most established industries as autonomous driving changes the entire field from a sector providing a very hardware oriented product to offering personal mobility without the need to drive a car. Now, there are still many questions to be answered. As we are changing the paradigm of what an automobile is, not just technology solutions need to be found, but also business models will change and legal frameworks need to be adapted. This talk will look at the topic of autonomous driving from different perspectives and discuss what needs to happen to make a great vision become reality and change transportation forever.</p>
2017-03-15 23:30:00Sven A. Beiker, PhD (Stanford Graduate School of Business)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2536From Planck to Escher [Applied Physics/Physics Colloquium]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/planck-escher-applied-physicsphysics-colloquium
<p>The recent observational data from the Planck satellite and ground based experiments support the standard cosmological model, defined by just a few independent parameters. Two of them require a theoretical explanation: the tilt of the power spectrum of the inflationary CMB fluctuations n<sub>s</sub>, and the level of inflationary gravitational waves, B-modes, r&lt; 0.07. I will describe the recently developed class of inflationary models based on the Poincare disk model of hyperbolic geometry, which is beautifully represented by the Escher's picture Circle Limit IV. In such models, n<sub>s</sub> is very close to the Planck result n<sub>s</sub> =0.965, whereas the amplitude of the gravitational waves can take various values proportional to the square of the radius of the Poincare disk. These models predict seven distinct targets for the B-mode experiments in the range r = 10<sup>-2</sup> -10<sup>-3</sup>, motivated by string theory.</p>
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<p>Held Tuesdays at 4:30 pm in the William R. Hewlett Teaching Center, room 200. Refreshments in the lobby of Varian Physics at 4:15 pm.</p>
<p>Winter 2016/2017, Committee: A. Linde (Chair), S. Kivelson, S. Zhang</p>
2017-03-14 23:30:00Renata Kallosh (Stanford)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2519Breaking the Barriers to True Augmented Reality [SCIEN]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/breaking-barriers-true-augmented-reality-scien
<p>In 1950, Alan Turing introduced the Turing Test, an essential concept in the philosophy of Artificial Intelligence (AI). He proposed an "imitation game" to test the sophistication of an AI software. Similar tests have been suggested for fields including Computer Graphics and Visual Computing. In this talk, we will propose an Augmented Reality Turing Test (ARTT).</p>
<p>Augmented Reality (AR) embeds spatially-registered computer graphics in the user's view in realtime. This capability can be used for a lot of purposes; for example, AR hands can demonstrate manual repair steps to a mechanic. To pass the ARTT, we must create AR objects that are indistinguishable from real objects. Ray Kurzweil bet USD 20,000 that the Turing Test will be passed by 2029. We think that the ARTT can be passed significantly earlier.</p>
<p>We will discuss the grand challenges for passing the ARTT, including: calibration, localization &amp; tracking, modeling, rendering, display technology, and multimodal AR. We will also show examples from our previous and current work at Nara Institute of Science and Technology in Japan.</p>
2017-03-14 23:30:00Dr. Christian Sandor (Nara Institute of Science and Technology (NAIST))https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2533Application-specific Power Management [Special Seminar]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/application-specific-power-management-special-seminar
<p>For many important and emerging applications, including the internet of things, smart sensors, health monitors, and wearable electronics, energy efficiency is of utmost importance. These applications rely on low-power microcontrollers and microprocessors that are already the most widely-used type of processor in production today and are projected to increase their market dominance in the near future. In the low-power embedded systems used by these applications, energy efficiency is the primary factor that determines critical system characteristics such as size, weight, cost, reliability, and lifetime. Although application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) have higher energy efficiency, low-power general purpose processors (GPPs) are the preferred solution for many such applications, due to the evolving nature of these applications and the high costs of custom IC design. Unfortunately, conventional power reduction techniques for GPPs reduce power by sacrificing performance. As such, their impact is limited to the point where performance degradation becomes unacceptable. This talk describes novel approaches to application-specific power management that push the limits of power reduction for GPPs without reducing performance. These power management techniques are based on novel hardware-software co-analysis that can identify the maximal set of hardware resources that an application can use during execution, irrespective of application inputs. Any power that is expended by resources that an application can never use can be eliminated, bringing the power consumption of a GPP running the application closer to that of an ASIC. Since resources that an application does not use do not contribute to application performance, power is reduced with no performance cost. New opportunities for application-specific power management enabled by hardware-software co-analysis include application-specific timing analysis, power gating, peak power management, processor customization, and thermal management.</p>
2017-03-13 23:30:00Prof. John Sartori (University of Minnesota)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2539Quest for Energy Efficiency in Computing Technologies [Applied Physics 483 Optics &amp; Electronics]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/quest-energy-efficiency-computing-technologies-applied-physics-483-optics-electronics
<p>As computing becomes increasingly pervasive in our daily life, it is generally recognized that energy efficiency will be one of the key design considerations for any future computing scheme. Consequently, significant research is currently ongoing on exploring new physics, material systems and system level designs to improve energy efficiency. In this talk, I shall discuss some of our recent progresses in this regard. Specifically, the physics of ordered and correlated systems allow for fundamental improvement of the energy efficiency when a transition happens between two distinguishable states. Our recent experiments show that this theoretical promise can indeed be realized in electronic devices. The resulting gain in energy efficiency could exceed orders of magnitude.</p>
2017-03-13 23:00:00 Sayeef Salahuddin (University of California, Berkeley)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2538Dead Week/Last Week of the Quarterhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/dead-weeklast-week-quarter-1
<p><span>Last week of classes, Winter quarter.</span></p>
2017-03-13 16:00:00 to 2017-03-18 00:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2520PhD Research Poster Sessionhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/department/phd-research-poster-session
<p>Join us for <strong>Research Poster</strong> presentations by EE PhD students.</p>
<p>EE students eager to share their research -- come enjoy their posters and demonstrations.</p>
<p>Student posters will also be judged by a group of faculty and staff. Presenters will have an opportunity to summarize their work and answer questions within a set timeframe. Judging criteria is based on 4 components: originality, content, oral presentation, and visual quality. One winner and one honorable mention will be awarded from each core research area. Winning presenters will receive a gift card and certificate. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Join us afterward for GSEE (Grad Students of EE) HappEE Hour (21 and over, please).</p>
2017-03-11 00:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2527CMOS Systems-on-Chip for NASA Millimeter-Wave &amp; THz Space Instruments [SystemX]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/general/cmos-systems-chip-nasa-millimeter-wave-thz-space-instruments-systemx
<p>In this talk we will first introduce the exciting Earth science, planetary science and astrophysics investigations that are performed by JPL and NASA at millimeter-wave and terahertz frequencies, describing several recent results by instruments operating in this wavelength regime. Then we will then discuss the important role CMOS system-on-chip (SoC) technology now plays in these instruments for LO generation, and signal processing, and the fundamental challenges (noise, extreme temperatures and radiation effects) that CMOS based instruments face in delivering the high level of fidelity required for NASA's science investigations. The talk will discuss several examples of CMOS SoC-based instruments from NASA programs including a 600 GHz side-band separated spectrometer being developed for investigations of Europa, Titan, Enceladus, and a 100 GHz in-situ spectrometer system for investigation of volatiles ejected from comet and asteroid surfaces. Additionally we will discuss several NASA radiometer instruments based on CMOS technology for observing Earth's atmosphere to diagnose precipitation and extreme weather events.</p>
2017-03-10 00:30:00Dr. Adrian Tang (NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2489Learning in Games via Reinforcement and Regularization [ISL Colloquium]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/learning-games-reinforcement-and-regularization-isl-colloquium
<p>We investigate a class of reinforcement learning dynamics where players adjust their strategies based on their actions' cumulative payoffs over time—specifically, by playing mixed strategies that maximize their expected cumulative payoff minus a regularization term. A widely studied example is exponential reinforcement learning, a process induced by an entropic regularization term which leads mixed strategies to evolve according to the replicator dynamics. However, in contrast to the class of regularization functions used to define smooth best responses in models of stochastic fictitious play, the functions used in this paper need not be infinitely steep at the boundary of the simplex; in fact, dropping this requirement gives rise to an important dichotomy between steep and nonsteep cases. In this general framework, we extend several properties of exponential learning, including the elimination of dominated strategies, the asymptotic stability of strict Nash equilibria, and the convergence of time-averaged trajectories in zero-sum games with an interior Nash equilibrium.</p>
2017-03-10 00:10:00Professor Panayotis Mertikopoulos (CNRS)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2515On Challenges in Wholesale Electricity Market Design [SmartGrid]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/challenges-wholesale-electricity-market-design-smartgrid
<p>Wholesale electricity markets for the bulk power systems are networked marketplaces for buying and selling energy, mediated by an independent system operator (ISO). Market design paradigms are not particularly suited to handle the deepening penetration of renewable supply. I will begin by discussing some challenges in forward market design that stem from the variability characteristics of renewables such as wind and solar resources. Then, I will present recent work on two possible ways to tackle that challenge — a stochastic economic dispatch based contingent pricing scheme and a centralized mechanism for trading cash-settled call options. In the second half of the talk, I will change gears and discuss the challenges in electricity market design that arise due to the strategic interaction among the generators. In this vein, I will discuss some recent results on a networked Cournot/Stackelberg model that offers insights into ways to mitigate the effects of strategic interaction in such networked markets.</p>
<hr /><p> </p>
<p>The SmartGrid seminar is scheduled at 1:30 pm on various dates throughout the Winter quarter. These speakers are renowned experts in power and energy systems, and we believe they will bring novel insights and fruitful discussions to Stanford. This seminar is offered as a 1 unit seminar course, CEE 272T/EE292T for interested students. This course can be repeated for credit for the students.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p><em>Yours sincerely,</em></p>
<p><em>SmartGrid Seminar Organization Team,</em></p>
<p><em>Ram Rajagopal, Assistant Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering</em><br /><em>Chin-Woo Tan, Director, Stanford Smart Grid Lab</em><br /><em>Wenyuan Tang, Postdoctoral Scholar, Civil and Environmental Engineering</em><br /><em>Emre Kara, Associate Staff Scientist, SLAC</em></p>
2017-03-09 21:30:00Subhonmesh Bose (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2480Pizza &amp; next quarter projects [lab64 workshop]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/pizza-next-quarter-projects-lab64-workshop
<p><strong>Interested in learning more about electronics?</strong> Join us in lab64 for weekly workshops. This quarter's workshops are currently scheduled for Wednesday nights in lab64 at 7pm, and aim to last about two hours.</p>
<ul><li>Week 1: Soldering Basics</li>
<li>Week 2: Introduction to PCB Design / Altium</li>
<li>Week 3: Introduction to SMT Assembly</li>
<li>Week 4: Introduction to PCB Design / EAGLE</li>
<li>Week 5: 3D Modeling with Solidworks</li>
<li>Week 6: Low Volume SMT Assembly and Rework</li>
<li>Week 7: 3D Printing and Lasercutting</li>
<li>Week 8: Introduction to FPGAs</li>
<li>Week 9: <span style="text-decoration: line-through;">3D Modeling with Solidworks</span> <strong><a href="https://docs.google.com/a/stanford.edu/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScnn1gioNdAsE08rAwecvzphP72VnpQv6AG3CpTIUyHf-7rSg/viewform?c=0&amp;w=1" target="_blank">Fill out this form</a></strong> so that we will have enough pizza while we talk about projects for next quarter.</li>
</ul><p> </p>
<p>Please note that the topics and/or schedule may change at any time. <br />Contact <a href="mailto:sgirvin@stanford.edu" class="mailto">Sam Girvin</a> with questions.</p>
2017-03-09 03:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2416A Learned Representation for Artistic Style [SCIEN]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/learned-representation-artistic-style-scien
<p>The diversity of painting styles represents a rich visual vocabulary for the construction of an image. The degree to which one may learn and parsimoniously capture this visual vocabulary measures our understanding of the higher level features of paintings, if not images in general. In this work we investigate the construction of a single, scalable deep network that can parsimoniously capture the artistic style of a diversity of paintings. We demonstrate that such a network generalizes across a diversity of artistic styles by reducing a painting to a point in an embedding space. Importantly, this model permits a user to explore new painting styles by arbitrarily combining the styles learned from individual paintings. We hope that this work provides a useful step towards building rich models of paintings and offers a window on to the structure of the learned representation of artistic style.</p>
2017-03-09 00:30:00Dr. Jon Shlens (Google)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2440Google&#039;s Multilingual Neural Machine Translation System [EE380 Computer Systems Colloquium]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/googles-multilingual-neural-machine-translation-system-ee380-computer-systems
<p>Neural Machine Translation (NMT) has been a big success story in the deep learning revolution. It has grown out of academic labs to large-scale adoption in a short period of time. Recently, we at Google announced that we are now providing neural translations to our users. In this talk, I will briefly review the history of machine translation and explain our GNMT (Google's NMT) system. I will talk about our approach to Multilingual NMT which aims to translate between multiple languages at the same time. This opens many interesting avenues for further research. Most notably, it enables us to perform Zero-Shot translation - the ability to translate between languages the model has never seen before. Further analysis of this phenomenon hints at a presence of an interlingua - a language independent representation.</p>
<p>This is joint work with many members from the Google Brain and Google Translate teams.</p>
2017-03-09 00:30:00Melvin Johnson (Google)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2517Fuse: study nighthttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/fuse-study-night-28
<p>Winter quarter '17 study nights are every Tuesday at 8:30pm in the Fuse room (Packard 318).</p>
<p>Snacks will be provided to fuel good work. We hope to see you there!</p>
<p>-Fuse</p>
2017-03-08 04:30:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2437Cosmology and the Arrow of Time [Applied Physics/Physics Colloquium]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/cosmology-and-arrow-time-applied-physicsphysics-colloquium
<p>The distinction between the past and the future has long been a puzzle. The world around us displays a huge asymmetry between the two directions of time, with eggs that easily break but never reassemble. However, according to the known laws of physics, for every system that evolves in time, there exists in principle a time-reversed (i.e., CPT conjugate) state that evolves in exactly the same way, but backwards in time. The time asymmetry is often attributed to the assumption that the universe began in a very low entropy state. This explanation is satisfactory, but leaves open the question of why the universe started in a low entropy state. In this talk I will describe a new picture of spacetime, proposed in 2004 by Carroll and Chen, in which the arrow of time can be explained by using only time-symmetric laws of physics and time-symmetric initial conditions as well.</p>
<hr /><p> </p>
<p>Held Tuesdays at 4:30 pm in the William R. Hewlett Teaching Center, room 200. Refreshments in the lobby of Varian Physics at 4:15 pm.</p>
<p><span>Winter 2016/2017, Committee: A. Linde (Chair), S. Kivelson, S. Zhang</span></p>
2017-03-08 00:30:00Alan Guth (MIT)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2518What do we know about Big Bang? [Physics Colloquium]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/what-do-we-know-about-big-bang-physics-colloquium
<p>This talk will discuss what we know about the Big Bang and how we learned it. Professor Carlstrom will also discuss the new questions being asked about the origin of the Universe and the experiments being pursued to answer them, peering back to the beginning of time.</p>
2017-03-04 03:30:00 Prof. John Carlstrom (University of Chicago)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2512Information-theoretic tradeoffs in control [IT-Forum]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/information-theoretic-tradeoffs-control-it-forum
<p>Consider a distributed control problem with a communication channel connecting the observer of a linear stochastic system to the controller. The goal of the controller is to minimize a quadratic cost function in the state variables and control signal, known as the linear quadratic regulator (LQR). We study the fundamental tradeoff between the communication rate r bits/sec and the limsup of the expected cost b.</p>
<p>We consider an information-theoretic rate-cost function, which quantifies the minimum mutual information between the channel input and output, given the past, that is compatible with a target LQR cost. We provide a lower (converse) bound to the rate-cost function, which applies as long as the system noise has a probability density function, and which holds for a general class of codes that can take full advantage of the memory of the data observed so far and that are not constrained to have any particular structure. The rate-cost function has operational significance in multiple scenarios of interest: among other, it allows us to lower bound the minimum communication rate for fixed and variable length quantization, and for control over a noisy channel.</p>
<p>Perhaps surprisingly, the bound can be approached by a simple variable-length lattice quantization scheme, as long as the system noise satisfies a smoothness condition. The quantization scheme only quantizes the innovation, that is, the difference between the controller's belief about the current state and the encoder's state estimate. To prove that this simple scheme is almost as good as the optimum if the target cost is not too large, we derive a new nonasymptotic upper bound on the entropy of a lattice quantizer in terms of the Shannon lower bound to rate-distortion function and a smoothness parameter of the source.</p>
<hr /><p> <strong>The Information Theory Forum (IT-Forum)</strong> at Stanford ISL is an interdisciplinary academic forum which focuses on mathematical aspects of information processing. With a primary emphasis on information theory, we also welcome researchers from signal processing, learning and statistical inference, control and optimization to deliver talks at our forum. We also warmly welcome industrial affiliates in the above fields. The forum is typically held in Packard 202 every Friday at 1:00 pm during the academic year.</p>
<p>The Information Theory Forum is organized by graduate students Jiantao Jiao and Yanjun Han. To suggest speakers, please contact any of the students.</p>
2017-03-03 21:15:00Victoria Kostina (Caltech)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2418The Connected Car Revolution: Making Driving Safer and More Efficient [SystemX Seminar]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/connected-car-revolution-making-driving-safer-and-more-efficient-systemx-seminar
<p>The automobile is one of the last frontiers of the wireless revolution. We live connected lives: at school, at home, at work. But, as drivers we're isolated, limited to what we can do hands-free, and not at all connected to drivers around us. More importantly, our cars are mobile islands, increasingly equipped with sensors that help the driver "see," but not able to communicate with their surroundings. That is changing. After more than a decade of intensive research, vehicles are poised to enter a new connected reality in which they constantly talk to each other, to pedestrians and bicyclists, and to smart devices at intersections and along the road. In this talk we will explore Dedicated Short Range Communication (DSRC) technology for vehicle-to/from-everything (V2X) connectivity. We will examine the wireless technology itself, including challenges that the research community has had to overcome. We will consider the range of V2X applications for safety, driving efficiency, and automated driving. In the safety sphere alone, the US Department of Transportation estimates that DSRC can help prevent or mitigate 80% of crashes involving non-impaired drivers, which is why they are working to require DSRC as a safety feature in new cars. We will discuss the status of DSRC deployment in the US and around the world. Finally, we will examine some possible barriers to DSRC deployment being advanced by non-DSRC stakeholders. The connected car revolution will bring predictable safety and efficiency benefits. Perhaps just as importantly it is likely to be an innovation platform for benefits we have not yet imagined.</p>
2017-03-03 00:30:00Dr. John Kenney (Toyota InfoTechnology Center)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2513Introduction to FPGAs [lab64 workshop]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/introduction-fpgas-lab64-workshop
<p><strong>FPGA workshop:</strong><br />This week's workshop will be super exciting! We'll be learning about field-programmable gate arrays, or FPGAs. An FPGA is basically a piece of reconfigurable hardware – code that you write gets synthesized into physical logic gates on the chip, which allows you to work with really fast signals and do very precise timing.</p>
<p>If you've never used an FPGA before, this will be a really cool workshop –we'll be starting from the ground up and programming a little FPGA board that's great for prototyping with. You'll need a laptop to participate in the workshop.</p>
<hr /><p> </p>
<p><strong>Interested in learning more about electronics?</strong> Join us in lab64 for weekly workshops. This quarter's workshops are currently scheduled for Wednesday nights in lab64 at 7pm, and aim to last about two hours.</p>
<ul><li>Week 1: Soldering Basics</li>
<li>Week 2: Introduction to PCB Design / Altium</li>
<li>Week 3: Introduction to SMT Assembly</li>
<li>Week 4: Introduction to PCB Design / EAGLE</li>
<li>Week 5: 3D Modeling with Solidworks</li>
<li>Week 6: Low Volume SMT Assembly and Rework</li>
<li>Week 7: 3D Printing and Lasercutting</li>
<li>Week 8: Introduction to FPGAs</li>
<li>Week 9: 3D Modeling with Solidworks</li>
</ul><p> </p>
<p>Please note that the topics and/or schedule may change at any time. <br />Contact <a href="mailto:sgirvin@stanford.edu" class="mailto">Sam Girvin</a> with questions.</p>
2017-03-02 03:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2415The AR/VR Renaissance: promises, disappointments, unsolved problems [SCIEN]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/arvr-renaissance-promises-disappointments-unsolved-problems-scien
<p>Augmented and Virtual Reality have been hailed as "the next big thing" several times in the past 25 years. Some are predicting that VR will be the next computing platform, or at least the next platform for social media. Others worry that today's VR systems are closer to the 1990s Apple Newton than the 2007 Apple iPhone. This talk will feature a short, personal history of AR and VR, a survey of some of current work, sample applications, and remaining problems. Current work with encouraging results include 3D acquisition of dynamic, populated spaces; compact and wide field-of-view AR displays; low-latency and high-dynamic range AR display systems; and AR lightfield displays that may reduce the accommodation-vergence conflict.</p>
<p>More information: <a href="http://henryfuchs.web.unc.edu/" target="_blank">http://henryfuchs.web.unc.edu/</a></p>
2017-03-02 00:30:00Professor Henry Fuchs (University of North Carolina)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2511Service Robots Are Here II [EE380 Computer Systems Colloquium]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/service-robots-are-here-ii-ee380-computer-systems-colloquium
<p>After 20 years of predictions that robots will work among us soon, the predictions are finally starting to come true. Investment in robotics is up, enabling start-ups to explore a range of use cases. Decreasing component costs will make it easier to make real business cases for the technology. Mobile robots are beginning to transform the way we serve people in hotels, elder care facilities, hospitals, restaurants, and throughout the service industry, and this trend is accelerating.</p>
<p>This talk is a sequel to my January 2015 talk. I'll discuss what has happened in the Service Robot field over the last two years.</p>
2017-03-02 00:15:00Steve Cousins (Savioke)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2514Fuse: study nighthttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/fuse-study-night-27
<p>Winter quarter '17 study nights are every Tuesday at 8:30pm in the Fuse room (Packard 318).</p>
<p>Snacks will be provided to fuel good work. We hope to see you there! </p>
<p>-Fuse</p>
2017-03-01 04:30:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2436Probing the Electron to Test the Most Precise Prediction of the Standard Model and Beyond [Applied Physics/Physics Colloquium]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/probing-electron-test-most-precise-prediction-standard-model-and-beyond-applied
<p>The most precise measurement of an elementary particle property tests the Standard Model's most precise prediction. The electron's measured charge asymmetry probes well beyond the Standard Model.</p>
2017-03-01 00:15:00Gerald Gabrielse, George Vasmer Leverett Professor of Physics (Harvard University)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2509&#039;Setting Traps for Antimatter&#039; presented by the Robert Hofstadter Memorial Lecturehttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/setting-traps-antimatter-presented-robert-hofstadter-memorial-lecture
<p>The <strong>2017 Robert Hofstadter Memorial lecture</strong> will be given tonight by <strong>Prof. Gerald Gabrielse</strong>, the George Vasmer Leverett Professor of Physics at Harvard University. Prof. Gabrielse started low energy antiproton and antihydrogen physics to investigate the symmetry between matter and antimatter, measured the electron g-factor to test the Standard Model's most precise prediction, and examined the electron electric dipole moment to search for the T violation missing in the Standard Model. He is a leader in super-precise measurements of fundamental particles and the study of anti-matter. This year, Prof. Gabrielse becomes the founding director of the Center for Fundamental Physics located at Northwestern University. A fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) and a member of the National Academy of Sciences, Prof. Gabrielse is the recipient of numerous prestigious awards, including the Davisson-Germer and Lilienfeld Prizes (both from the APS), Italy's Tomassoni Prize, Germany's Humboldt Research Award, and Harvard's prizes for both exceptional teaching and research.</p>
<p>Trapped antimatter particles and atoms open the way to extremely precise comparisons of antimatter and matter - made to test the most fundamental symmetry of the Standard Model.</p>
2017-02-28 04:00:00Prof. Gerald Gabrielse, George Vasmer Leverett Professor of Physics (Harvard University)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2510Optimizing Neural Network Design: Quantization, Network Compression and Pruninghttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/optimizing-neural-network-design-quantization-network-compression-and-pruning
<p>Redundancy in neural networks offers opportunities of design optimization.</p>
<p>In this talk, we introduce our recent work on three optimization techniques:</p>
<ul><li>First, we explain a quantization method based on weighted entropy which makes ResNet-101 run at 6 bit weight and activation without accuracy loss.</li>
<li>Second, we report our case study of applying low rank approximation technique namely Tucker decomposition to CNNs running on the smartphone.</li>
<li>Lastly, we introduce a zero-aware hardware accelerator called ZeNA and a novel pruning method for activations.</li>
</ul>2017-02-28 00:30:00Prof. Sungjoo Yoo (Seoul National University)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2507Synopsys LightTools Hands-On Training [Optical Society Workshop]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/synopsys-lighttools-hands-training-optical-society-workshop
<p><strong>Capacity: 18 people</strong></p>
<p>LightTools is a 3D optical engineering and design software product that supports virtual prototyping, simulation, optimization, and photorealistic renderings of illumination applications. Its unique design and analysis capabilities, combined with ease of use, support for rapid design iterations, and automatic system optimization, help to ensure the delivery of illumination designs according to specifications and schedule.</p>
<p>LightTools is used by industry leaders for engineering applications such as LEDs, displays, lighting, solar, automotive, head-mounted displays, projectors, etc.</p>
<p><strong>Please read:</strong></p>
<ul><li>This is a hands-on interactive training session; you will need to actively participate.</li>
<li>The software runs on Windows. Therefore, you will need a computer that runs Windows for the training.</li>
<li>You should register only if you are absolutely sure that you can commit for the full 4-hours.</li>
<li>Since it is a hands-on session, the capacity is limited to 18 people. The first 18 people to RSVP will receive the download link, license information, and event location.</li>
<li><strong>Please RSPV using the following link:</strong><a href="https://ee.stanford.edu/%20https%3A//www.surveymonkey.com/r/DSHDMD5" target="_blank"> https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/DSHDMD5</a></li>
</ul>2017-02-27 21:00:00 to 2017-02-28 01:00:00Craig Pansing (Synopsys, Inc.)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2508Information Theory, Geometry, and Cover&#039;s Open Problem [IT-Forum]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/information-theory-geometry-and-covers-open-problem-it-forum
<p>Formulating the problem of determining the communication capacity of point-to-point channels as a problem in high-dimensional geometry is one of Shannon's most important insights that has led to the conception of information theory. However, such geometric insights have been limited to the point-to-point case, and have not been effectively utilized to attack network problems. In this talk, we present our recent work which develops a geometric approach to make progress on one of the central problems in network information theory, namely the capacity of the relay channel. In particular, consider a memoryless relay channel, where the channel from the relay to the destination is an isolated bit pipe of capacity C0. Let C(C0) denote the capacity of this channel as a function of C0. What is the critical value of C0 such that C(C0) first equals C(infinity)? This is a long-standing open problem posed by Cover and named ''The Capacity of the Relay Channel,'' in Open Problems in Communication and Computation, Springer-Verlag, 1987. In this talk, we answer this question in the Gaussian case and show that C0 can not equal to C(infinity) unless C0=infinity, regardless of the SNR of the Gaussian channels, while the cut-set bound would suggest that C(infinity) can be achieved at finite C0. The key step in our proof is a strengthening of the isoperimetric inequality on a high-dimensional sphere, which we use to develop a packing argument on a spherical cap that resembles Shannon's sphere packing idea for point-to-point channels.</p>
<p>Joint work with Leighton Barnes and Ayfer Ozgur.</p>
<hr /><p> </p>
<p>The Information Theory Forum (IT-Forum) at Stanford ISL is an interdisciplinary academic forum which focuses on mathematical aspects of information processing. With a primary emphasis on information theory, we also welcome researchers from signal processing, learning and statistical inference, control and optimization to deliver talks at our forum. We also warmly welcome industrial affiliates in the above fields. The forum is typically held in Packard 202 every Friday at 1:00 pm during the academic year.</p>
<p>The Information Theory Forum is organized by graduate students Jiantao Jiao and Yanjun Han. To suggest speakers, please contact any of the students.</p>
2017-02-24 21:15:00Xiugang Wu (Stanford)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2483Low-Energy Embedded Systems and Innovative Differentiated Technologies for Future IoT Applications [SystemX Seminar]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/low-energy-embedded-systems-and-innovative-differentiated-technologies-future-iot
<p>Pervasive IoT systems are making our lives easier with an enhanced user experience in a variety of widely deployed applications. Microsystems and features of IoT embedded systems and their key technical requirements will be described. Energy efficiency of the future intelligent IoT systems require balancing of computing and communication locally at the IoT node calling upon both Moore's Law and Shannon's Law in concert. Innovative technologies to create power-differentiated and cost-effective solutions for future IoT applications will be explained; including specialty SONOS eNVM technology, low-power radios and small form-factor system-in-package &amp; interconnect technologies. We compare them with alternative competitive technologies and explore how participants' future innovations can be integrated in IoT systems. eNVM technology is critical in enabling energy autonomous IoT systems that rely on intermittent source of energy for program, data, security and advanced networking protocols. Finally, we will demonstrate a low-energy IoT system for precision agriculture that uses solar energy harvesting and conclude by describing a vision of future IoT systems.</p>
2017-02-24 00:30:00Ali Keshavarzi (Cypress Semiconductor)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2468Toward single letter feedback capacity via structured auxiliary random variable [ISL Colloquium]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/toward-single-letter-feedback-capacity-structured-auxiliary-random-variable-isl
<p>It is well known that feedback capacity is characterized using directed information which is a multi-letter expression. In this talk we aim to convert the multi-letter expression into a single-letter expression using a new idea of an auxiliary random variable that has a graphical structure.</p>
<p>Auxiliary random variables (r.v.) play a fundamental role in characterizing the capacity of channels, especially in multi-user setting such as Gelfand-Pinsker or the degraded broadcast channel. In most cases, choosing a sequence of an i.i.d auxiliary r.v. allows us to simplify a capacity expression and to have a computable, single-letter form. In this talk we will introduce a new kind of auxiliary r.v. that is not i.i.d. but has memory that is generated on a graphical structure. In particular, we show that the feedback capacity of the unifilar channel is upper bounded by a single-letter expression that is a function of the stationary distribution on the graph representing the memory of the auxiliary r.v.. Furthermore, in all cases where the capacity is known, such as the trapdoor channel, Ising channel, Dicode channel, erasure channel with no repeated ones, the upper bound yields, with a small cardinality bound on the structured auxiliary r.v., a tight bound on the feedback capacity.</p>
<p>As time permits, we will also introduce a sufficient condition on having a specific structured auxiliary that admits the feedback capacity, and present an achievability scheme for channels with memory based on the posterior matching idea.</p>
2017-02-24 00:15:00Haim Permuter (Ben Gurion University)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2505 Understanding the Value of Distributed Energy Resources: New Methods and Insights for Electricity Economics, Planning, and Operations [SmartGrid]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/understanding-value-distributed-energy-resources-new-methods-and-insights-electricity
<p>Distributed energy resources (DERs), including distributed generation, storage, and demand response, create new options for the provision of electricity services. As detailed in the recently released MIT Utility of the Future study, these distributed resources compete with and complement one another as well as conventional generation resources and network assets. In addition, many DERs exhibit tradeoffs between "locational value" (deriving from loss mitigation, network capacity deferral, constraint mitigation, etc.) and economies of unit scale. New electricity system modeling tools are needed to evaluate the value of DERs and provide insights into how, where, and why DERs can be economically attractive contributors to an affordable and reliable electricity system. This seminar will describe a new electricity resource capacity planning tool, "GenX," suitable for analyzing the role and value of DERs in power systems and present insights from initial case studies.</p>
<hr /><p> </p>
<p>The SmartGrid seminar is scheduled at 1:30 pm on various dates throughout the Winter quarter. These speakers are renowned experts in power and energy systems, and we believe they will bring novel insights and fruitful discussions to Stanford. This seminar is offered as a 1 unit seminar course, CEE 272T/EE292T for interested students. This course can be repeated for credit for the students.</p>
<p><em>Yours sincerely, </em></p>
<p><em>SmartGrid Seminar Organization Team, </em></p>
<p><em>Ram Rajagopal, Assistant Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering</em><br /><em>Chin-Woo Tan, Director, Stanford Smart Grid Lab</em><br /><em>Wenyuan Tang, Postdoctoral Scholar, Civil and Environmental Engineering</em><br /><em>Emre Kara, Associate Staff Scientist, SLAC</em></p>
2017-02-23 20:00:00Jesse Jenkins (MIT)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/24793D Printing and Lasercutting [lab64 workshop]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/3d-printing-and-lasercutting-lab64-workshop
<p><strong>Interested in learning more about electronics?</strong> Join us in lab64 for weekly workshops. This quarter's workshops are currently scheduled for Wednesday nights in lab64 at 7pm, and aim to last about two hours.</p>
<ul><li>Week 1: Soldering Basics</li>
<li>Week 2: Introduction to PCB Design / Altium</li>
<li>Week 3: Introduction to SMT Assembly</li>
<li>Week 4: Introduction to PCB Design / EAGLE</li>
<li>Week 5: 3D Modeling with Solidworks</li>
<li>Week 6: Low Volume SMT Assembly and Rework</li>
<li>Week 7: 3D Printing and Lasercutting</li>
<li>Week 8: Introduction to FPGAs</li>
<li>Week 9: 3D Modeling with Solidworks</li>
</ul><p> </p>
<p>Please note that the topics and/or schedule may change at any time. <br />Contact <a href="mailto:sgirvin@stanford.edu" class="mailto">Sam Girvin</a> with questions.</p>
2017-02-23 03:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2414Computer Architecture [EE380]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/computer-architecture-ee380
<p>TBA</p>
2017-02-23 00:30:00Thomas Sohmers (REX Computing)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2487First-Photon Imaging and Other Imaging with Few Photons [SCIEN]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/first-photon-imaging-and-other-imaging-few-photons-scien
<p>LIDAR systems use single-photon detectors to enable long-range reflectivity and depth imaging. By exploiting an inhomoheneous Poisson process observation model and the typical structure of natural scenes, first-photon imaging demonstrates the possibility of accurate LIDAR with only 1 detected photon per pixel, where half of the detections are due to (uninformative) ambient light. I will explain the simple ideas behind first-photon imaging. Then I will touch upon related subsequent works that mitigate the limitations of detector arrays, withstand 25-times more ambient light, allow for unknown ambient light levels, and capture multiple depths per pixel.</p>
2017-02-23 00:30:00Professor Vivek Goyal (Boston University)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2502Fuse: study nighthttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/fuse-study-night-26
<p>Winter quarter '17 study nights are every Tuesday at 8:30pm in the Fuse room (Packard 318).</p>
<p>Snacks will be provided to fuel good work. We hope to see you there!</p>
<p> -Fuse</p>
2017-02-22 04:30:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2435The Washington Post Executive Editor Marty Baron [Brown Institute]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/general/washington-post-executive-editor-marty-baron-brown-institute
<p>The Brown Institute for Media Innovation presents Washington Post Executive Editor Marty Baron in conversation as part of our Media Innovators Speaker Series.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>Please Register <a href="http://brwn.co/baron" target="_blank">http://brwn.co/baron</a></strong></p>
2017-02-22 03:30:00Marty Baron (Washington Post)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2503Women in EE [lab64]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/women-ee-lab64
<p>Join us in lab64! We are hosting a social event/fun workshop. </p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">All are welcome to join us building an Arduino snake game -- there will be snacks!</span></p>
2017-02-22 03:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2477Exploring the Landscape of Interacting Topological Insulators [Applied Physics/Physics]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/exploring-landscape-interacting-topological-insulators-applied-physicsphysics
<p>The past decade has seen a phenomenal rise of topological insulators and superconductors. The first discovery, led by the Stanford group and the Wurzburg group, concerns a planar material of a "quantum spin Hall topological insulator," which acts as an electronic superhighway. It is one of the building blocks needed to create future electronics and computers. In this talk I will show, as proposed by the Stanford group, that such insulators can be built from common compound semiconductors containing a double-layer of electrons and holes, created by band-gap engineering using molecular beam epitaxy and electrostatic gates. The material supports quantized one dimensional helical edge modes. Quite surprisingly, here we find a superhighway with puzzling twists, for which electron-electron interactions may be responsible. Amazingly, due the interactions between electron and holes, our recent optical and transport experiment confirm that the material can become a superconductor, where the pairing of electron and holes resembles the Cooper pair in ordinary superconductors.</p>
<p><em>Reference: X. L. Qi,S. C. Zhang, Review of Modern Physics, 83(4), 175 (2010)</em></p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
2017-02-22 00:30:00Rui-Rui Du (Rice University)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2504On Two Problems in Coded Statistical Inference [IT-Forum]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/two-problems-coded-statistical-inference-it-forum
<p>While statistical inference and information theory are deeply related fields, problems which lie at the intersection of both disciplines usually fall between the two stools, and lack definitive answers. In this talk, I will discuss recent advances in two such problems.</p>
<p>In the first part of the talk, I will discuss a distributed hypothesis testing problem, in which the hypotheses regard the joint statistics of two sequences, one available to the decision function directly (as side information), while the other is conveyed through a limited-rate link. The goal is to design a system which obtains the optimal trade-off between the false-alarm and misdetection exponents. I will define a notion of "channel detection codes", and show that the optimal exponents of the distributed hypothesis testing problem is directly related to the exponents of these codes. Then, I will discuss a few bounds on the exponents of channel detection codes, as well as prospective improvements. This approach has a two merits over previous works: It is suitable for any pair of memoryless joint distributions, and it provides bounds on the entire false-alarm/misdetection curve, rather than just bounds on its boundary points (Stein's exponent).</p>
<p>In the second part of the talk (time permitting), I will discuss a parameter estimation problem over an additive Gaussian noise channel with bandlimited input. In case one is allowed to design both the modulator and the estimator, the absolute \$alpha$-th moment of the estimation error can decrease exponentially with the transmission time. I will discuss several new upper (converse) bounds for the optimal decrease rate.</p>
<p>Joint work with Yuval Kochman (Hebrew university) and Neri Merhav (Technion).</p>
<hr /><p> </p>
<p>The Information Theory Forum (IT-Forum) at Stanford ISL is an interdisciplinary academic forum which focuses on mathematical aspects of information processing. With a primary emphasis on information theory, we also welcome researchers from signal processing, learning and statistical inference, control and optimization to deliver talks at our forum. We also warmly welcome industrial affiliates in the above fields. The forum is typically held in Packard 202 every Friday at 1:00 pm during the academic year.</p>
<p>The Information Theory Forum is organized by graduate students Jiantao Jiao and Yanjun Han. To suggest speakers, please contact any of the students.</p>
2017-02-17 21:15:00Nir Weinberger (Technion)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2420TreeHacks hackathonhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/treehacks-hackathon
<p><strong>TreeHacks</strong> is a hackathon where you turn your crazy ideas into real stuff. Hundreds of hackers from across the globe will gather and build something they're passionate about; come, dive in, and make the most incredible things you can imagine alongside fellow creators. You take care of building. We'll take care of you.</p>
<p><em>Stanford students may still enroll. Open to undergrad or grad students.</em></p>
2017-02-17 08:00:00 to 2017-02-19 08:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2451Alumni &amp; Industry Dinner for Undergrads [Fuse]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/alumni-industry-dinner-undergrads-fuse
<p>Fuse is hosting its yearly Alumni and Industry Dinner this Thursday at 7pm in Packard 318!</p>
<p>Come talk to alumni working in industry about their experiences! We will have alumns from Raytheon, Agilent, Sound Hound, and more!</p>
<p>There will be Thai food from Lotus Thai. If you have dietary restrictions please reach out! We want to make sure that you have good options as well</p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong><a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/782036028617886/" target="_blank">Please RSVP</a></strong></p>
<p> </p>
<p>Also, join <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/369986706720939/" target="_blank">Fuse Facebook group</a> for more updates.</p>
2017-02-17 03:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2499GPU Computing: From Computer Games to Deep Learning and Self-Driving Cars [SystemX]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/gpu-computing-computer-games-deep-learning-and-self-driving-cars-systemx
<p>This talk will discuss the evolution of GPU computing over the last ten years from computer gaming to high performance and scientific computing to most recently self-driving cars and speech recognition in the data center. Along the way, there have been many challenges and innovations in hardware architecture, memory technology, power efficiency, resiliency and programming models. Most recently, deep learning have emerged as a dominant workload that is driving many of the new applications. This new workload shares many aspects of prior applications while at the same time introducing new and unique computational demands that are driving next-generation design.</p>
2017-02-17 00:30:00 Dr. Michael Lightstone (Nvidia)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2488Intro to Prototyping Techniques [lab64 workshop]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/intro-prototyping-techniques-lab64-workshop
<p><strong>Interested in learning more about electronics?</strong> Join us in lab64 for weekly workshops. This quarter's workshops are currently scheduled for Wednesday nights in lab64 at 7pm, and aim to last about two hours.</p>
<ul><li>Week 1: Soldering Basics</li>
<li>Week 2: Introduction to PCB Design / Altium</li>
<li>Week 3: Introduction to SMT Assembly</li>
<li>Week 4: Introduction to PCB Design / EAGLE</li>
<li>Week 5: 3D Modeling with Solidworks</li>
<li>Week 6:<span style="text-decoration: line-through;"> Low Volume SMT Assembly and Rework</span> <strong>CHANGED TO:</strong> Intro to Prototyping Techniques</li>
<li>Week 7: 3D Printing and Lasercutting</li>
<li>Week 8: Introduction to FPGAs</li>
<li>Week 9: 3D Modeling with Solidworks</li>
</ul><p> </p>
<p>Please note that the topics and/or schedule may change at any time. <br />Contact <a href="mailto:sgirvin@stanford.edu" class="mailto">Sam Girvin</a> with questions.</p>
2017-02-16 03:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2413Data For The People [EE380]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/data-people-ee380
<p>Join us Wednesday at 4:30pm for the Stanford EE Computer Systems Colloquium:<br /><strong>Andreas Weigend</strong> will share his journey from starting as a PhD student at Stanford in neural networks, to becoming the Chief Scientist at Amazon, and ultimately writing the book <em>J</em>, that came out last week (Jan 31, 2017) and was displayed on Times Square for free!</p>
<p>Sign up at <a href="http://ourdata.com/tour" target="_blank">http://ourdata.com/tour</a> by February 12 (Sunday) to get an electronic copy of the book. Read it. And bring your questions to the talk!</p>
<p>Andreas Weigend just published his book, <em>Data For The People</em> on big data, transparency and what to do about it. As the former Chief Scientist at Amazon, he helped create Amazon's culture of data and innovation.</p>
<hr /><p> <strong>The Stanford EE Computer Systems Colloquium (EE380)</strong> meets on Wednesdays 4:30-5:45 throughout the academic year. Talks are given before a live audience in Room B03 in the basement of the Gates Computer Science Building on the Stanford Campus. The live talks (and the videos hosted at Stanford and on YouTube) are open to the public.</p>
2017-02-16 00:30:00Andreas Weigend (Social Data Lab)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2425Visual Vibration Analysis [SCIEN]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/visual-vibration-analysis-scien
<p>Davis will show how video can be a powerful way to measure physical vibrations. By relating the frequencies of subtle, often imperceptible changes in video to the vibrations of visible objects, we can reason about the physical properties of those objects and the forces that drive their motion. In my talk I'll show how this can be used to recover sound from silent video (Visual Microphone), estimate the material properties of visible objects (Visual Vibrometry), and learn enough about the physics of objects to create plausible image-space simulations (Dynamic Video).</p>
2017-02-16 00:30:00Dr. Abe Davis (Stanford)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2441Fuse: study nighthttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/fuse-study-night-25
<p>Winter quarter '17 study nights are every Tuesday at 8:30pm in the Fuse room (Packard 318).</p>
<p>Snacks will be provided to fuel good work. We hope to see you there!</p>
<p> </p>
<p>-Fuse</p>
2017-02-15 04:30:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2434Quantum supremacy: Checking a quantum computer with a classical supercomputer [Applied Physics/Physics Colloquium]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/quantum-supremacy-checking-quantum-computer-classical-supercomputer-applied
<p>A key step in the roadmap to build a scientifically or commercially useful quantum computer will be to demonstrate its exponentially growing computing power. I will explain how a 7 by 7 array of superconducting xmon qubits with nearest-neighbor coupling, and with programmable single- and two-qubit gate with errors of about 0.1%, can execute a modest depth quantum computation that fully entangles the 49 qubits. Sampling of the resulting output can be checked against a classical simulation to demonstrate proper operation of the quantum computer and compare its system error rate with predictions. With a computation space of 2^49 = 5 x 10^14 states, the quantum computation can only be checked using the biggest supercomputers. With modest improvements in qubit performance, we plan to demonstrate this experiment in 2017.</p>
2017-02-15 00:30:00John Martinis (Google and Univ. of Calif. at Santa Barbara)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2496Undergrads &amp; Faculty Advisors &amp; Donuts [Fuse]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/undergrads-faculty-advisors-donuts-fuse
<p><strong>Fuse Undergraduate Group</strong> is hosting Coffee and Donuts with Faculty Advisors. This is an opportunity to chat with professors about academic interests. Several professors will be in attendance. </p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong><a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/1854689458107841/" target="_blank">Please RSVP</a></strong></p>
2017-02-10 22:30:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2492Semantic security versus active adversaries and wiretap channels with random parameters [IT-Forum]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/semantic-security-versus-active-adversaries-and-wiretap-channels-random-parameters-it
<p>Physical Layer Security (PLS) guarantees protection against computationally-unlimited eavesdroppers without using a key. These guarantees come at the price of an unrealistic assumption that the eavesdropper's channel is fully known to the legitimate parties. Furthermore, typical PLS metrics are incompatible with the features of the data they are designed to protect. For these reasons, PLS has found limited use in practice despite its various benefits. By means of a novel and stronger version of Wyner's soft-covering lemma, we upgrade IT security proofs to the stronger and more practically viable semantic-security metric, while removing the 'known eavesdropper channel' assumption. As applications we derive the semantic-security capacity of the type constrained arbitrarily varying wiretap channel (WTC), and as its special case, solve the problem of the WTC of type II with a noisy main channel -- a problem by Ozarow and Wyner that was open since 1984. The scenario where the state sequence is random (rather than arbitrary) is also considered. We construct a simple semantically-secure superposition code that strictly outperforms the best previously known achievable rates. The construction implicitly includes a key agreement phase (by means of the random and i.i.d. state sequence) that is crucial for the aforementioned improvement.</p>
<hr /><p> </p>
<p>The Information Theory Forum (IT-Forum) at Stanford ISL is an interdisciplinary academic forum which focuses on mathematical aspects of information processing. With a primary emphasis on information theory, we also welcome researchers from signal processing, learning and statistical inference, control and optimization to deliver talks at our forum. We also warmly welcome industrial affiliates in the above fields. The forum is typically held in Packard 202 every Friday at 1:00 pm during the academic year.</p>
<p>The Information Theory Forum is organized by graduate students Jiantao Jiao and Yanjun Han. To suggest speakers, please contact any of the students.</p>
2017-02-10 21:15:00Ziv Goldfeld (Ben-Gurion University)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2419IEEE Arduino Robotics Workshop [lab64]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/ieee-arduino-robotics-workshop-lab64
<address>Learn how to program an <strong>Obstacle Avoiding Robot </strong>(<em>be sure to RSVP via the link below)</em></address>
<ul><li>Learn basic robotic fundamentals using a simple 2 wheel servo motor driven platform</li>
<li>Practice primary microcontroller concepts such as pulse width modulation, analog to digital conversion and finite state machine design</li>
<li>The robot platforms are based on the Mega324P Xplained Mini evalplatform which will be preloaded to look like an Arduino board.</li>
</ul><p><a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1q4ng2kSvOR3R7h2KScZdQZFao7ZbeBa_jIld3H00zcc/edit" target="_blank"><strong>Please RSVP</strong></a></p>
2017-02-10 01:00:00Bob Martin (Wizard of Make / Senior Staff Engineer, Microchip)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2482Analog Techniques for Ultra-Low-Power Transceiver [SystemX Seminar]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/analog-techniques-ultra-low-power-transceiver-systemx-seminar
<p>The talk is divided in two parts, the former dedicated to RF front-end for ultra-low-power wireless transceivers, the latter to the base-band section and the challenging problem of channel selection filtering.</p>
<p><strong>How to transform a simple LC-VCO into complete analog RF front-ends </strong>LC harmonic oscillators are widely used in wireless communications to generate reference signals inside the radio. It will be shown how such structures can be transformed into complete RF front-ends with just some minor modifications from the original topology. Initially, the LC oscillator will be transformed into an RX front-end exploiting its intrinsic property to work as a mixer. After that a Class-C LC oscillator will be merged with a power amplifier to realize a TX front-end suitable for FSK and GFSK transmitter. Measurements results on two prototypes tailored to BLE application will be shown.</p>
<p><strong>Adaptive filters and passive switched capacitors </strong>In the second part of the talk, two emerging techniques used for the design of channel selection filters in wireless receivers will be discussed. Initially, a novel an adaptive filter architecture will be presented. The filter succeeds to shape the filtering profile as function of the operative scenario without the need of any control loop. After that, passive switched capacitors filters will be analyzed. A new intuitive continuous-time model will be introduced. The model easily allows to design high-order topologies even with complex conjugates poles without the need of any active device. Measurements results on two different prototypes will be provided.</p>
2017-02-10 00:30:00Prof. Antonio Liscidini (University of Toronto)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2467Learning to Rank in Click Models [ISL Colloquium]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/learning-rank-click-models-isl-colloquium
<p>Learning to rank in web search is one of the most natural applications of existing bandit algorithms. One challenge of this problem is that the clicks on recommended items are typically not independent of each other. For instance, if the highest ranked item is attractive, the user does not click on lower ranked items because the highest ranked item satisfies the user; not because the lower ranked items are not attractive. The learning agent does not observe what would have happened if the lower ranked items were examined. In addition, the click on a recommended item often depends on both its attractiveness and position. If the item is not clicked, it may be because it is not attractive or because its position is not examined. The learning agent does not observe which of these factors causes the lack of clicks. In this talk, we present several near-optimal bandit algorithms for learning to rank from partial feedback, which address the aforementioned problems. To solve the latter problem, we propose the first bandit algorithm for finding the maximum entry of a stochastic rank-1 matrix whose regret scales favorably with all quantities of interest.</p>
2017-02-10 00:00:00Branislav Kveton (Adobe Research)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2475Behind the Integration of DER: Policy, Analytics, and Market Design [SmartGrid]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/behind-integration-der-policy-analytics-and-market-design-smartgrid
<p>California utilities are integrating distributed energy resources (DER) into their system planning and operations in new and progressive ways. If successful, they will rely on DER (e.g., solar paired with batteries) when they plan and operate their systems, displacing the need for traditional distribution infrastructure (e.g. conductors, capacitors). If they are unsuccessful, they will likely build redundant systems to serve power if/when DER are not available. The difference between success and failure amounts to a substantial impact on the value of DER and efficiency of investment in the grid. This seminar will introduce the policy, analytics, and market design behind the integration of DER, as well as a discussion of the critical role of technology.</p>
2017-02-09 21:30:00Matthew Tisdale (More Than Smart)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/24763D Modeling with Solidworks [lab64 workshop]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/3d-modeling-solidworks-lab64-workshop-0
<p><strong>Interested in learning more about electronics?</strong> Join us in lab64 for weekly workshops. This quarter's workshops are currently scheduled for Wednesday nights in lab64 at 7pm, and aim to last about two hours.</p>
<ul><li>Week 1: Soldering Basics</li>
<li>Week 2: Introduction to PCB Design / Altium</li>
<li>Week 3: Introduction to SMT Assembly</li>
<li>Week 4: Introduction to PCB Design / EAGLE</li>
<li>Week 5: 3D Modeling with Solidworks</li>
<li>Week 6: Low Volume SMT Assembly and Rework</li>
<li>Week 7: 3D Printing and Lasercutting</li>
<li>Week 8: Introduction to FPGAs</li>
<li>Week 9: 3D Modeling with Solidworks</li>
</ul><p> </p>
<p>Please note that the topics and/or schedule may change at any time. <br />Contact <a href="mailto:sgirvin@stanford.edu" class="mailto">Sam Girvin</a> with questions.</p>
2017-02-09 03:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2412 Adversarial perceptual representation learning across diverse modalities and domains [SCIEN]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/adversarial-perceptual-representation-learning-across-diverse-modalities-and-domains
<p>Learning of layered or "deep" representations has provided significant advances in computer vision in recent years, but has traditionally been limited to fully supervised settings with very large amounts of training data. New results in adversarial adaptive representation learning show how such methods can also excel when learning in sparse/weakly labeled settings across modalities and domains. I'll review state-of-the-art models for fully convolutional pixel-dense segmentation from weakly labeled input, and will discuss new methods for adapting models to new domains with few or no target labels for categories of interest. As time permits, I'll present recent long-term recurrent network models that learn cross-modal description and explanation, visuomotor robotic policies that adapt to new domains, and deep autonomous driving policies that can be learned from heterogeneous large-scale dashcam video datasets.</p>
2017-02-09 00:30:00Trevor Darrell (University of California at Berkeley)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2438In-network Nonconvex Large-scale Optimization [ISL Colloquium]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/network-nonconvex-large-scale-optimization-isl-colloquium
<p>Nowadays, large-scale systems are ubiquitous. Some examples/applications include wireless communication networks; electricity grid, sensor, and cloud networks; and machine learning and signal processing applications, just to name a few. In many of the above systems, i) data are distributively stored in the network (e.g., clouds, computers, sensors, robots), and ii) it is often impossible to run analytics on central fusion centers, owing to the volume of data, energy constraints, and/or privacy issues. Thus, distributed in-network processing with parallelized multi-processors is preferred. Moreover, many applications of interest lead to large-scale optimization problems with nonconvex, nonseparable objective functions. All this makes the analysis and design of distributed/parallel algorithms over networks a challenging task. In this<br />talk we will present our ongoing work in this area. More specifically, we consider a large-scale network composed of agents aiming to distributively minimize a (nonconvex) smooth sum-utility function plus a nonsmooth (nonseparable), convex one. The latter is usually employed to enforce some structure in the solution, e.g., sparsity. The agents have access only to their local functions (data) but not the whole objective, and the network is modeled as a directed, time-varying, graph. We propose a distributed solution method for the above optimization wherein the agents in parallel minimize a convex surrogate of the original nonconvex objective while using a novel tacking mechanism and broadcast protocol to estimate locally the missing global information and distribute the computations over the network, respectively. We discuss several instances of the general algorithm framework tailored to specific (convex and nonconvex) applications and present some numerical results validating our theoretical findings.</p>
2017-02-09 00:00:00Prof. Gesualdo Scutari (Purdue)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2478Fuse: study nighthttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/fuse-study-night-24
<p>Winter quarter '17 study nights are every Tuesday at 8:30pm in the Fuse room (Packard 318).</p>
<p>Snacks will be provided to fuel good work. We hope to see you there!</p>
<p> </p>
<p>-Fuse</p>
2017-02-08 04:30:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2433Symmetries, Duality, and the Unity of Physics [Applied Physics/Physics Colloquium]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/symmetries-duality-and-unity-physics-applied-physicsphysics-colloquium
<p>Global symmetries and gauge symmetries have played a crucial role in physics. The idea of duality demonstrates that gauge symmetries can be emergent and might not be fundamental. During the past decades it became clear that the circle of ideas about emergent gauge symmetries and duality is central in different branches of physics, including condensed matter physics, quantum field theory, and quantum gravity. I will review these developments, which highlight the unity of physics.</p>
2017-02-08 00:30:00Nathan Seiberg (Institute for Advanced Study)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2470High Performance Computing (HPC) Conferencehttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/high-performance-computing-hpc-conference
<p>Join the <strong>Stanford High Performance Computing Center, HPC Advisory Council</strong> and fellow experts from industry, academia and government as we continue to explore major advances being achieved across the research and development community at the Sixth Annual Stanford Conference.</p>
<p>Over two days we'll delve into a wide range of interests and best practices - in applications, tools and techniques and share new insights on the trends, technologies and collaborative partnerships that foster this robust ecosystem.</p>
<p>Designed to be highly interactive, the open forum will feature industry notables in keynotes, technical sessions, workshops and tutorials. These highly regarded subject matter experts (SME's) will share their works and wisdom covering everything from established HPC disciplines to emerging usage models from old-school architectures and breakthrough applications to pioneering research and provocative results. Plus a healthy smattering of conversation and controversy on endeavors in Exascale, Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and much much more!</p>
<p><em>Open to all and free of charge, we look forward to gathering with you!</em></p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong><a href="http://hpcadvisorycouncil.com/events/2017/stanford-workshop/" target="_blank">Please register for this free event.</a></strong></p>
2017-02-07 17:00:00 to 2017-02-09 01:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2472Special Seminar: Designing (Relatively) Reliable Systems with (Highly) Unreliable Componentshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/special-seminar-designing-relatively-reliable-systems-highly-unreliable-components
<p>Ten years after the new breed of ideas on how to design reliable systems with unreliable components, the design challenges posed by variations are harder than ever. To reduce the large energy cost of computational correctness due to variations, the VLSI community is now exploring ways to embrace imperfect computation, instead of over-constraining circuits/systems to hide the natural imperfection of hardware. However, the field of "approximate computing" is still in its infancy, and most of the related work is highly fragmented and not really focused on the real challenges.</p>
<p>In this talk, a vision on how mainstream processing platforms can incorporate error-tolerant computation will be presented. In particular, we will introduce a unitary framework for systems that dynamically trade off energy and quality of computation, depending on the application and the user's requirements. Fresh concepts to preserve the economy of scale offered by todays' design approaches will be discussed, along with ways to incorporate dynamic energy-quality management in general-purpose systems, designed with existing EDA tools, and programmed with existing software programming models (or so). Variation-aware circuit techniques and design strategies will be discussed to enable dynamic and wide energy-quality adjustment in sub-32nm technologies, from error-tolerant to error-free. Appropriate abstractions, architectures and control schemes will be discussed to propagate such capability at all levels.</p>
2017-02-07 00:30:00Prof. Massimo Alioto (National University of Singapore)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2469EE Prom 2017https://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/ee-prom-2017
<p>Dance the night away at EEPROM 2017! GSEE's annual gala is back for another year, and we've got great music, hors d'oeuvres, and drinks.</p>
<p>EE Prom is a great time to put on your best clothes and relax with your colleagues.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Must be 21 or over.</p>
<p>Tickets are $20-$25. Available at the following link, or in Packard atrium, weekdays from 12-1p. </p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1"><a href="http://eeprom2017.eventbrite.com/"><span class="s2">eeprom2017.eventbrite.com</span></a></span></p>
2017-02-04 05:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2456Stanford Computational Imaging Open Labhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/stanford-computational-imaging-open-lab
<p>Among the presented works are the following:</p>
<ul><li>"<strong>The Light Field Stereoscope</strong>" (demo), R. Konrad, more info: <a href="http://www.computationalimaging.org/publications/the-light-field-stereoscope/"><span class="s3">http://www.computationalimaging.org/publications/the-light-field-stereoscope/</span></a></li>
<li>"<strong>Gaze-contingent and Varifocal Near-eye Displays</strong>" (demo), N. Padmanaban, more info: <a href="http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2929470&amp;CFID=720395724&amp;CFTOKEN=59374293"><span class="s4">http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2929470&amp;CFID=720395724&amp;CFTOKEN=59374293</span></a></li>
<li>"<strong>Monovision Near-eye Displays</strong>" (demo), R. Konrad, more info: <a href="http://www.computationalimaging.org/publications/novel-optical-configurations-for-virtual-reality-evaluating-user-preference-and-performance-with-focus-tunable-and-monovision-near-eye-displays/"><span class="s3">http://www.computationalimaging.org/publications/novel-optical-configurations-for-virtual-reality-evaluating-user-preference-and-performance-with-focus-tunable-and-monovision-near-eye-displays/</span></a></li>
<li>"<strong>Saliency in VR: How do People Explore Virtual Environments?</strong>" (poster and demo), V. Sitzmann, more info: <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1612.04335"><span class="s4">https://arxiv.org/abs/1612.04335</span></a></li>
<li>"<strong>Accommodation-invariant Computational Near-eye Displays</strong>" (demo), R. Konrad et al., more info: TBD</li>
<li>"<strong>Depth-dependent Visual Anchoring for Reducing Motion Sickness in VR</strong>", N. Padmanaban et al., more info: TBD</li>
<li>"<strong>ProxImaL: Efficient Image Optimization using Proximal Algorithms</strong>" (poster), F. Heide et al., more info: <a href="http://www.proximal-lang.org/en/latest/"><span class="s4">http://www.proximal-lang.org/en/latest/</span></a></li>
<li>"<strong>Dirty Pixels: Optimizing Image Classification Architectures for Raw Sensor Data</strong>" (poster), S. Diamond et al., more info: <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1701.06487"><span class="s4">https://arxiv.org/abs/1701.06487</span></a></li>
<li>"<strong>Vortex: Live Cinematic Virtual Reality</strong>" (demo), R. Konrad et al., more info: TBD</li>
<li>"<strong>Transient Imaging with Single Photon Detectors</strong>" (poster), M. O'Toole et al, more info: TBD</li>
<li>"<strong>Robust Non-line-of-sight Imaging with Single Photon Detectors</strong>" (poster), F. Heide et al., more info: TBD</li>
<li>"<strong>Variable Aperture Light Field Photography</strong>" (poster), J. Chang et al., more info: <a href="http://www.computationalimaging.org/publications/variable-aperture-light-field-photography-overcoming-the-diffraction-limited-spatio-angular-resolution-tradeoff/"><span class="s3">http://www.computationalimaging.org/publications/variable-aperture-light-field-photography-overcoming-the-diffraction-limited-spatio-angular-resolution-tradeoff/</span></a></li>
<li>"<strong>Computational Time-of-Flight Photography</strong>" (poster), F. Heide, more info: <a href="http://www.computationalimaging.org/publications/multi-camera-time-of-flight-systems/"><span class="s3">http://www.computationalimaging.org/publications/multi-camera-time-of-flight-systems/</span></a></li>
<li>"<strong>Wide Field-of-View Monocentric Light Field Imaging</strong>" (poster and demo), D. Dansereau, more info: TBD</li>
<li>"<strong>Hacking the Vive Lighthouse - Arduino-based Positional Tracking in VR with Low-cost Components</strong>" (demo), K. Molnar, more info: TBD</li>
</ul>2017-02-03 18:00:00 to 2017-02-03 23:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2458Fuse: winter quarter dinnerhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/fuse-winter-quarter-dinner
<p>Recharge with nourishing food and friends. EE undergrads are invited.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong><a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/1096830873796958/" target="_blank">Please RSVP now.</a> </strong></p>
<p>If you have dietary restrictions please reach out ASAP! We want to make sure that you have good options as well :)</p>
<p> </p>
2017-02-03 02:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2462DNA Nanotechnology-based Engineering at the Biointerfaces [SystemX Seminar]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/dna-nanotechnology-based-engineering-biointerfaces-systemx-seminar
<p>Proteins and nucleic acids are dynamically organized in cells to realize their physiological functions with spatial and temporal orderliness. This type of elegant supermolecular assembly has inspired researchers to create molecular/biomolecular structures with dynamic organization outside of the cells. In particular, DNA nanotechnology has proven to possess extraordinary flexibility and convenience for "bottom-up" construction of exquisite nanostructures with high controllability and precision, which holds great promise in a wide range of applications, e.g., nanofabrication and molecular electronics, in-vivo and in-vitro sensing and drug delivery.</p>
<p>In this talk, I will present several examples of using tetrahedral DNA nanostructures (TDNs) for engineering the interfaces of cytoplasmic membranes and biosensors. TDNs are three-dimensional (3D) DNA architecture with high mechanical rigidity and structural stability, which are suitable for organization of higher-ordered nanocomplexes and nanodevices. In one example, we employed single-particle tracking to visualize the internalization of TDNs, and dissect the cell entry pathways of these virus-like nanoparticles. In the second example, we dynamically organized biomolecular receptors at the biosensing interface using TDNs, and performed in-vitro diagnostics for various diseases.</p>
2017-02-03 00:30:00Prof. Chunhai Fan (Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics, Chinese Academy of Science)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2466Sequential Recommendations [ISL Colloquium]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/sequential-recommendations-isl-colloquium
<p>With "sequential" recommendations we refer to the problem where a system recommends various "things" to a person over time to achieve long-term objectives. In this talk I will present two domains that I have worked on and the research challenges and solutions. The first domain is a system at some web site that recommends various offers. For he offers to be successful the system should reason about successive tempting offers. The second domain is a points of interest recommendation (POI) system, where it recommends various locations for a person to visit in a city, or attractions in a theme park. These locations are recommended in a sequence, where the next POI follows naturally from the previous, while satisfying user preferences. For both domains we used Reinforcement learning algorithms. Some of the research challenges addressed were off-policy evaluation, building a recommendation system from "passive" data that do not contain past actions/recommendations. Inferring the user propensity to listen to a recommendation and optimizing for long-term recommendation while minimizing recommendation fatigue.</p>
2017-02-03 00:00:00Georgios Theocharous, Senior Analytics Researcher (Adobe Research)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2449Introduction to PCB Design / EAGLE [lab64 workshop]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/introduction-pcb-design-eagle-lab64-workshop
<p><strong>Interested in learning more about electronics?</strong> Join us in lab64 for weekly workshops. This quarter's workshops are currently scheduled for Wednesday nights in lab64 at 7pm, and aim to last about two hours.</p>
<ul><li>Week 1: Soldering Basics</li>
<li>Week 2: Introduction to PCB Design / Altium</li>
<li>Week 3: Introduction to SMT Assembly</li>
<li>Week 4: Introduction to PCB Design / EAGLE</li>
<li>Week 5: 3D Modeling with Solidworks</li>
<li>Week 6: Low Volume SMT Assembly and Rework</li>
<li>Week 7: 3D Printing and Lasercutting</li>
<li>Week 8: Introduction to FPGAs</li>
<li>Week 9: 3D Modeling with Solidworks</li>
</ul><p> </p>
<p>Please note that the topics and/or schedule may change at any time. <br />Contact <a href="mailto:sgirvin@stanford.edu" class="mailto">Sam Girvin</a> with questions.</p>
2017-02-02 03:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2411Beyond Floating Point: Next-Generation Computer Arithmetic [EE380]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/beyond-floating-point-next-generation-computer-arithmetic-ee380
<p>A new data type called a "posit" is designed for direct drop-in replacement for IEEE Standard 754 floats. Unlike unum arithmetic, posits do not require interval-type mathematics or variable size operands, and they round if an answer is inexact, much the way floats do. However, they provide compelling advantages over floats, including simpler hardware implementation that scales from as few as two-bit operands to thousands of bits. For any bit width, they have a larger dynamic range, higher accuracy, better closure under arithmetic operations, and simpler exception-handling. For example, posits never overflow to infinity or underflow to zero, and there is no "Not-a-Number" (NaN) value. Posits should take up less space to implement in silicon than an IEEE float of the same size. With fewer gate delays per operation as well as lower silicon footprint, the posit operations per second (POPS) supported by a chip can be significantly higher than the FLOPs using similar hardware resources. GPU accelerators, in particular, could do more arithmetic per watt and per dollar yet deliver superior answer quality.</p>
<p>A series of comprehensive benchmarks compares how many decimals of accuracy can be produced for a set number of bits-per-value, using various number formats. Low-precision posits provide a better solution than "approximate computing" methods that try to tolerate decreases in answer quality. High-precision posits provide better answers (more correct decimals) than floats of the same size, suggesting that in some cases, a 32-bit posit may do a better job than a 64-bit float. In other words, posits beat floats at their own game.</p>
<hr /><p> </p>
<p><strong>The Stanford EE Computer Systems Colloquium (EE380)</strong> meets on Wednesdays 4:30-5:45 throughout the academic year. Talks are given before a live audience in Room B03 in the basement of the Gates Computer Science Building on the Stanford Campus. The live talks (and the videos hosted at Stanford and on YouTube) are open to the public.</p>
2017-02-02 00:30:00John Gustafson (Singapore National University)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2424Fuse: study nighthttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/fuse-study-night-29
<p>Weekly study nights for undergrads.</p>
<p>This is a great opportunity to work with others (esp. on EE101a and EE102a), and we have snacks!</p>
2017-02-01 04:30:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2461Women in Japanese Business Panel Discussion [US-ATMC Seminar, Japan 151/251]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/women-japanese-business-panel-discussion-us-atmc-seminar-japan-151251
<p>Topics will include women in entrepreneurship, company management, and professional careers in Japan or with Japanese clients. Recent trends and factors for success.</p>
<p><strong>Panelists:</strong></p>
<ul><li><strong>Ari Horie</strong>, Founder and CEO, Women's Startup Lab</li>
<li><strong>Miki Matsui</strong>, Sr. Manager for Business Development, Xacti Corporation</li>
<li><strong>Elizabeth Shoemaker</strong>, Partner, Makman Law Offices</li>
</ul><p> </p>
<p>Details available at <strong><a href="http://asia.stanford.edu/?page_id=7575?" target="_blank">http://asia.stanford.edu</a></strong>.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>This seminar is open to the public at no charge. The program is part of our JAPAN 151/251 – Japanese Business Culture &amp; Systems winter course. Free parking after 4:00 pm on campus in designated areas – please check signs carefully.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><em>Light refreshments afterward.</em></p>
2017-02-01 00:30:00Panel Discussionhttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/2450Graph Structure in Polynomial Systems: Chordal Networks [Math Dept.]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/graph-structure-polynomial-systems-chordal-networks-math-dept
<p>The sparsity structure of a system of polynomial equations or an optimization problem can be naturally described by a graph summarizing the interactions among the decision variables. It is natural to wonder whether the structure of this graph might help in computational algebraic geometry tasks (e.g., in solving the system). In this talk we will provide an introduction to this area, focused on the key notions of chordality and treewidth, which are of great importance in related areas such as numerical linear algebra, database theory, constraint satisfaction, and graphical models. In particular, we will discuss "chordal networks", a novel representation of structured polynomial systems that provides a computationally convenient decomposition of a polynomial ideal into simpler (triangular) polynomial sets, while maintaining its underlying graphical structure. As we will illustrate through examples from different application domains, algorithms based on chordal networks can significantly outperform existing techniques. Based on joint work with Diego Cifuentes (MIT).</p>
2017-01-31 23:00:00Pablo Parrilo (MIT)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2464Mixed Reality Demos [Rabbit Hole VR Club]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/mixed-reality-demos-rabbit-hole-vr-club
<p><strong>Join us! </strong></p>
<p><strong>Talk:</strong> Serial tech evangelist and EIR at UploadVR, Robert Scoble, will engage with three guests to delve into the future of mixed reality in 15 min talks (in G101 at the Stanford Business School from 6:15-7:15PM).</p>
<p><strong>Demos:</strong> Then you will immerse yourselves in different mixed reality experiences (in the co.lab at the Stanford Business School from 7:15-8PM). From using AltspaceVR to engage with others in a room on the other side of the world to watching an award-winning short film in VR - you will experience different applications of mixed reality.</p>
2017-01-31 02:15:00Robert Scoble (UploadVR)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2452Convex sets, matrix factorizations and positive semidefinite rank [Math Dept.]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/convex-sets-matrix-factorizations-and-positive-semidefinite-rank-math-dept
<p>In optimization one often represents convex sets in terms of convex cones. Such representations or 'lifts' of a convex set are especially useful if the cone admits efficient algorithms for linear optimization over its affine slices, as in the classical cases of linear and semidefinite programming. In this lecture we discuss the relationship between conic representations of convex sets, and a special "conic" factorization of an operator associated to the convex set, generalizing earlier results of Yannakakis on polyhedral lifts of polytopes and nonnegative factorizations. When the cones live in a family, our results lead to the definition of the rank of a convex set with respect to this family (e.g., the positive semidefinite rank of a convex set), as well as techniques for lower bounding these ranks. We will provide a gentle introduction to these techniques, emphasizing geometric intuition, open questions as well as recent results. Based on joint work with Joao Gouveia, Hamza Fawzi, James Saunderson and Rekha Thomas.</p>
2017-01-31 00:30:00Pablo Parrilo (MIT)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2463High-speed imaging meets single-cell analysis [SCIEN]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/high-speed-imaging-meets-single-cell-analysis-scien
<p>High-speed imaging is an indispensable tool for blur-free observation and monitoring of fast transient dynamics in today's scientific research, industry, defense, and energy. The field of high-speed imaging has steadily grown since Eadweard Muybridge demonstrated motion-picture photography in 1878. High-speed cameras are commonly used for sports, manufacturing, collision testing, robotic vision, missile tracking, and fusion science and are even available to professional photographers. Over the last few years, high-speed imaging has been shown highly effective for single-cell analysis – the study of individual biological cells among populations for identifying cell-to-cell differences and elucidating cellular heterogeneity invisible to population-averaged measurements. The marriage of these seemingly unrelated disciplines has been made possible by exploiting high-speed imaging's capability of acquiring information-rich images at high frame rates to obtain a snapshot library of numerous cells in a short duration of time (with one cell per frame), which is useful for accurate statistical analysis of the cells. This is a paradigm shift in the field of high-speed imaging since the approach is radically different from its traditional use in slow-motion analysis. In this talk, I introduce a few different methods for high-speed imaging and their application to single-cell analysis for precision medicine and green energy.</p>
2017-01-28 00:30:00Professor Keisuke Goda (University of Tokyo)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2439Codes and card tricks: Magic for adversarial crowds [IT-Forum]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/codes-and-card-tricks-magic-adversarial-crowds-it-forum
<p>Rated by Ron Graham as a top-10 mathematical card trick of the 20th century, Diaconis' mind reader is a magic that involves the interaction with five collaborative volunteers. Inspired by this, we perform a similar card trick in this talk with the upgrade to tolerate bluffing volunteers. The theory behind this trick will be used to develop fundamental limits as well as code constructions for faster delay estimation in positioning systems.</p>
<p>This is a joint work with Sihuang Hu and Ofer Shayevitz (https://arxiv.org/abs/1605.09038).</p>
2017-01-27 21:15:00Lele Wang, Postdoctoral Fellow (Stanford)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/24555G and Beyond: From Fundamental Research to Startup Innovation [SystemX]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/5g-and-beyond-fundamental-research-startup-innovation-systemx
<p>With the arrival of 5G we are entering a new phase of communications infrastructure. Today the network is mainly used for moving content, e.g. videos, web data, emails, and audio. However, neither are sensors widely connected to a ubiquitous network, nor can we remote control real and/or virtual objects. In the latter case we require the installation of the "Tactile Internet", i.e. a network which allows for 1-10ms end-to-end response latency. Once this is achieved, humans, machines, as well as robots will be able to interact in real-time with virtual as well as real objects, enabling applications spanning the economies of health &amp; care, manufacturing, mobility, edutainment, events, and energy. Each new economic opportunity on its own is a market of similar value as cellular is today. However, each opportunity comes with differing boundary conditions on the Tactile Internet, as we have learnt from our project fastZwanzig20 and the 5G Lab Germany.</p>
<p>Many applications require that the system operates with a minimum downtime, measured e.g. as outage. For manufacturing this can be as low as 10^-8, which is in stark contrast to well-designed 4G networks that deliver an outage of 3% at the cost of a latency generating HARQ. We can show with first theoretical results that new concepts allow for low latency reliable communications.</p>
<p>To design the Tactile Internet, today's cellular networks with a best-in-class response latency of 25ms must be redesigned from a physical layer up to the application layer. Due to the slow speed of light of 200km/ms over fiber, central web servers must be augmented by a distributed Mobile Edge Cloud, with new server architectures, operating systems, and more.</p>
<p>In this talk some basic ideas will be addressed which have been developed at TU Dresden, showing solutions from silicon hardware architecture, signal processing and modulation, to edge server design. And, also sketching out the huge startup potential waiting for us!</p>
2017-01-27 00:30:00Professor Gerhard Fettweiss (TU Dresden)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2445Breaker to Control Center Integration &amp; Automation: PCO&amp;O [SmartGrid]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/breaker-control-center-integration-automation-pcoo-smartgrid
<p>Recent technological advances in protection, control and optimization are enabling a more automated power system. Research efforts are focused on integrating these technologies into a seamless and cyber secure infrastructure for protection, control and operation. This infrastructure is the basis for accommodating and providing robust solutions to new problems arising from the integration of renewables, increased uncertainty and steeper ramp rates. The system must be secure against malicious cyber-attacks at every level. We discuss the infrastructure at the substation level where we build upon the dynamic state estimation based protection (EBP) and a centralized substation protection integrated with distributed dynamic state estimation and all substation control, operation and optimization functions. All functions are model based: we discuss an automated creation of the models required at each level of a hierarchical control, operation and optimization functions. The substation level system is extended to a subsystem/agent level for control and optimization at subsystems consisting of extended clusters of substations. At subsystem level, the infrastructure enables full state feedback for optimal control. Issues of time latency are addressed. Finally, the concepts are extended to the control center where all the functions that coordinate substations and subsystems are exercised. At each one of the three levels (substation, subsystem, control center), defenses against malicious cyber-attacks are integrated. We will discuss data attacks as well as insertion of malicious commands and the integrated intrusion detection methods. The proposed approach and infrastructure forms the basis for the next generation of Energy Management Systems.</p>
2017-01-26 21:30:00Prof. Sakis Meliopoulos (Georgia Institute of Technology)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2446The Dynamics of Young Venture Development [ISL Colloquium]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/dynamics-young-venture-development-isl-colloquium
<p>This talk will examine the evolution of young ventures by considering the relationship between their delineation of functional roles and their ability to attract resources from venture capital investors. Prior research has suggested that ventures formalize roles and introduce functional specialists as they evolve as part of a process sometimes referred to as professionalization. I will clarify and distinguish the types of functional roles that ventures introduce and theorize how the formal dedication of personnel to each of these domains helps attract funding. My study proposes that the degree of importance of each role type varies at different points in the venture's development as a result of changing loci of investor concerns and norms about what constitute critical activities across funding stages. Predictions are tested using a novel longitudinal dataset that combines information on how 2,627 San Francisco-based technology ventures internally organized across their entire early lives with information on their success in progressing between the first three funding stages. This study contributes to research on organizational evolution, entrepreneurship, and organizational design.</p>
2017-01-26 20:15:00Professor Ranjay Gulati (Harvard Business School)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2453Introduction to SMT Assembly [lab64 workshop]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/introduction-smt-assembly-lab64-workshop
<p><strong>Interested in learning more about electronics?</strong> Join us in lab64 for weekly workshops. This quarter's workshops are currently scheduled for Wednesday nights in lab64 at 7pm, and aim to last about two hours.</p>
<ul><li>Week 1: Soldering Basics</li>
<li>Week 2: Introduction to PCB Design / Altium</li>
<li>Week 3: Introduction to SMT Assembly</li>
<li>Week 4: Introduction to PCB Design / EAGLE</li>
<li>Week 5: 3D Modeling with Solidworks</li>
<li>Week 6: Low Volume SMT Assembly and Rework</li>
<li>Week 7: 3D Printing and Lasercutting</li>
<li>Week 8: Introduction to FPGAs</li>
<li>Week 9: 3D Modeling with Solidworks</li>
</ul><p> </p>
<p>Please note that the topics and/or schedule may change at any time. <br />Contact <a href="mailto:sgirvin@stanford.edu" class="mailto">Sam Girvin</a> with questions.</p>
2017-01-26 03:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2410Deep Learning in the Age of Zen, Vega, and Beyond [EE380]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/deep-learning-age-zen-vega-and-beyond-ee380
<p>Deep Learning and Machine Intelligence is maturing to the point where is it is being deployed to many applications, particularly large data, imaging classification and detection. This talk addresses the challenges of deep learning from a computational challenge perspective and discusses the ways in which new compute platforms of Zen (x86) and Vega (GPU) provide high performance solutions to different training and inference applications. The ROCm software stack completes the support with libraries and framework support for a variety of environments.</p>
<hr /><p><strong>ABOUT THE COLLOQUIUM:</strong></p>
<p>See the Colloquium website, <a href="http://ee380.stanford.edu" target="_blank">http://ee380.stanford.edu</a>, for scheduled speakers, FAQ, and additional information. Stanford and SCPD students can enroll in EE380 for one unit of credit. Anyone is welcome to attend; talks are webcast live and archived for on-demand viewing over the web.</p>
2017-01-26 00:30:00Allen Rush (AMD)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2457Fuse: study nighthttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/fuse-study-night-23
<p>Winter quarter '17 study nights are every Tuesday at 8:30pm in the Fuse room (Packard 318).</p>
<p>Snacks will be provided to fuel good work. We hope to see you there!</p>
<p> </p>
<p>-Fuse</p>
2017-01-25 04:30:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2432The Direct Detection of Gravitational Waves: Observation of the Mergers of Black Hole Binaries [AP/Physics Colloquium]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/direct-detection-gravitational-waves-observation-mergers-black-hole-binaries-apphysics
<p>I will cover some of the history of gravitational waves and include a description of the instrument and the data analysis techniques. Measurement results and the prospects for the future will also be discussed.</p>
2017-01-25 00:30:00Rainer Weiss (MIT)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2443Data-driven, Interactive Scientific Articles in a Collaborative Environment with Authorea [OSA; WEE]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/data-driven-interactive-scientific-articles-collaborative-environment-authorea-osa-wee
<p>Most tools that scientists use for the preparation of scholarly manuscripts, such as Microsoft Word and LaTeX, function offline and don't account for the digital-born nature of research objects. Further, most authoring tools in use today are not designed for collaboration. As scientific collaborations grow in size, research transparency and the attribution of scholarly credit are at stake. I will show how Authorea allows scientists to write rich data-driven manuscripts on the web; articles that natively offer readers a dynamic, interactive experience with an article's full text, images, data, and code, paving the way to increased data sharing, research reproducibility, and Open Science. I will also demonstrate how Authorea differs from Overleaf and ShareLaTeX.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><em>Please bring your laptop to actively participate in the demo (suggested; not mandatory)</em></p>
2017-01-24 20:30:00Alberto Pepe, PhD (Authorea, Inc.)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2444Bayesian Optimization and other Bad Ideas for Hyperparameter Optimization [IT Forum]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/bayesian-optimization-and-other-bad-ideas-hyperparameter-optimization-it-forum
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<p>The performance of machine learning systems depends critically on tuning parameters that are difficult to set by standard optimization techniques. Such "hyperparameters"---including model architecture, regularization, and learning rates---are often tuned in an outer loop by black-box search methods evaluating performance on a holdout set. We formulate such hyperparameter tuning as a pure-exploration problem of deciding how many resources should be allocated to particular hyperparameter configurations. I will introduce our Hyperband algorithm for this framework and a theoretical analysis that demonstrates its ability to adapt to uncertain convergence rates and the dependency of hyperparameters on the validation loss. I will close with several experimental validations of Hyperband, including experiments on training deep networks where Hyperband outperforms state-of-the-art Bayesian optimization methods by an order of magnitude.</p>
<hr /><p> </p>
<p>The Information Theory Forum (IT-Forum) at Stanford ISL is an interdisciplinary academic forum which focuses on mathematical aspects of information processing. With a primary emphasis on information theory, we also welcome researchers from signal processing, learning and statistical inference, control and optimization to deliver talks at our forum. We also warmly welcome industrial affiliates in the above fields. The forum is typically held in Packard 202 every Friday at 1:00 pm during the academic year.</p>
<p>The Information Theory Forum is organized by graduate students Jiantao Jiao and Yanjun Han. To suggest speakers, please contact any of the students.</p>
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</div>
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2017-01-20 21:15:00Kevin Jamieson (UC Berkeley)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2417The Arduino Story [SystemX]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/arduino-story-systemx
<ul><li>In the beginning, how the Atmel mega328P won the race</li>
<li>Moving to more integrated designs, the Leonardo (32u4)</li>
<li>Entering the 32 bit ARM Cortex world with the Arduino Due and its problems</li>
<li>Attack of the clones, the Open Hardware issue and creative trademark spoofing</li>
<li>32 bit attempt take 2, the Arduino Zero</li>
<li>Dark days – the Arduino divorce</li>
<li>A new hope – Reconciliation at Make Faire New York 2016</li>
</ul>2017-01-20 00:30:00Bob Martin (Wizard of Make / Senior Staff Engineer, Microchip)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2427The Role of Demand &amp; Storage in an Integrated Energy System [SmartGrid]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/role-demand-storage-integrated-energy-system-smartgrid
<p>As energy systems have evolved from small isolated single energy vector systems into continental scale integrated energy systems the supply demand balance principle is a fundamental law underpinning and shaping their evolution. In an integrated energy system, supply demand balance, is across energy vectors (e.g. fuels, heat, and electricity), across scales/infrastructure (e.g. gas, heat, electricity networks) with and/or without storage capability and with all the consequential losses. In particular the demand side in an integrated energy system is no longer seen as a single energy vector consuming entity but rather as an entity that potentially can derive an energy service from a choice of energy vectors (e.g. hybrid cars), can self-supply (e.g. photovoltaic), can supply others and can store energy for later use. This trend is gaining traction but the direction of travel and the end result is very unclear. The component parts of this uncertainty are regulatory, economic, political and technological. Here the potential role in particular of demand and/or storage in a future integrated energy system is explored with some research results. The need for a more comprehensive, inter disciplinary, international and collaborative research and demonstration programme is highlighted and will be illustrated by reference to the Real Value project.</p>
<hr /><p> </p>
<p><strong>About the SmartGrid Seminar:</strong></p>
<p>Our speakers will discuss exciting new ideas and technologies that are changing the electricity industry. The theme of the seminar series is on smart grids and energy systems, with speakers from academic institutions and industry. The hour-long seminars, including ample time for discussion, are held at 1:30 pm every Thursday. Open to all Stanford students, faculty and staff.</p>
2017-01-19 21:30:00Mark O’Malley (University College Dublin)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2421Introduction to PCB Design / Altium [lab64 workshop]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/introduction-pcb-design-altium-lab64-workshop
<p><strong>Interested in learning more about electronics?</strong> Join us in lab64 for weekly workshops. This quarter's workshops are currently scheduled for Wednesday nights in lab64 at 7pm, and aim to last about two hours.</p>
<ul><li>Week 1: Soldering Basics</li>
<li>Week 2: Introduction to PCB Design / Altium</li>
<li>Week 3: Introduction to SMT Assembly</li>
<li>Week 4: Introduction to PCB Design / EAGLE</li>
<li>Week 5: 3D Modeling with Solidworks</li>
<li>Week 6: Low Volume SMT Assembly and Rework</li>
<li>Week 7: 3D Printing and Lasercutting</li>
<li>Week 8: Introduction to FPGAs</li>
<li>Week 9: 3D Modeling with Solidworks</li>
</ul><p> </p>
<p>Please note that the topics and/or schedule may change at any time. <br />Contact<span> </span><a href="mailto:sgirvin@stanford.edu" class="mailto">Sam Girvin</a><span> with questions.</span></p>
2017-01-19 03:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2409From chocolate to mice, the darknet to facial expressions, chatbots to humanitarians, and so forth [EE380]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/chocolate-mice-darknet-facial-expressions-chatbots-humanitarians-and-so-forth-ee380
<p><strong>What is beyond the cliché of Switzerland = chocolate ?</strong></p>
<ul><li>Is it the numerous and often not well known Swiss contributions to computer science?</li>
<li>It is the fact the Switzerland was the birthplace of the world wide web?</li>
<li>Is it the "porous" system, largely unbound by geographies, which encourages transdisciplinarity?</li>
<li>Is it the century-old tradition of neutrality and humanitarian engagement challenged by the ubiquity of communication devices and social networks?</li>
<li>Is it the power of artists thinking about the societal impact of IT?</li>
</ul><p>In this talk I'll use several examples from here and there to discover similarities and differences, and how they will shape the future.</p>
<hr /><p> </p>
<p><strong>The Stanford EE Computer Systems Colloquium (EE380)</strong> meets on Wednesdays 4:30-5:45 throughout the academic year. Talks are given before a live audience in Room B03 in the basement of the Gates Computer Science Building on the Stanford Campus. The live talks (and the videos hosted at Stanford and on YouTube) are open to the public.</p>
2017-01-19 00:30:00Christian Simms (Swissnex)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2423Adaptive optics retinal imaging: more than just high-resolution [SCIEN]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/adaptive-optics-retinal-imaging-more-just-high-resolution-scien
<p>The majority of the cells in the retina do not reproduce, making early diagnosing of eye disease paramount. Through improved resolution provided by the correction of the ocular monochromatic aberrations, adaptive optics combined with conventional and novel imaging techniques reveal pathology at the cellular-scale. When compared with existing clinical tools, the ability to visualize retinal cells and microscopic structures non-invasively represents a quantum leap in the potential for diagnosing and managing ocular, systemic and neurological diseases. The presentation will first cover the adaptive optics technology itself and some of its unique technical challenges. This will be followed by a review of AO-enhanced imaging modalities applied to the study of the healthy and diseased eye, with particular focus on multiple-scattering imaging to reveal transparent retinal structures.</p>
2017-01-19 00:30:00Professor Alfredo Dubra (Stanford Ophthalmology)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2426Fuse: study nighthttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/fuse-study-night-22
<p>Winter quarter '17 study nights are every Tuesday at 8:30pm in the Fuse room (Packard 318).</p>
<p>Snacks will be provided to fuel good work. We hope to see you there!</p>
<p> </p>
<p>-Fuse</p>
2017-01-18 04:30:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2431Programming: A Medium for Clarifying Ideas [AP/Physics Colloquium]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/programming-medium-clarifying-ideas-apphysics-colloquium
<p>We think of computers as compliant slaves that deliver computational power in the same way that a power shovel delivers muscle power. To me programming is a medium for the expression and investigation of ideas, analogous to natural language and mathematics.</p>
<p>In subjects that I teach at MIT, such as advanced classical mechanics, it is easy to get a right answer without real understanding. I use computer programs to communicate a deeper understanding of the material. Programs are for students to read as well as for a computer to execute. Expressing methods in a computer language forces them to be unambiguous and computationally effective. The task of formulating a method as an executable program and debugging it is a powerful part of the learning process. Once formalized as a program, a mathematical idea becomes a tool that can be used to compute results.</p>
<p>I will show how programming can help us to illuminate subjects like Analytical Mechanics and Differential Geometry and make parts of General Relativity come alive.</p>
2017-01-18 00:15:00Gerald Jay Sussman (MIT)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2430Martin Luther King, Jr. Day (no classes)https://ee.stanford.edu/event/general/martin-luther-king-jr-day-no-classes
<p>Martin Luther King, Jr. Day (no classes)</p>
2017-01-16 08:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2428Security in Wireless Networks under Imperfect Channel Knowledge in Wireless Networks [IT Forum]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/security-wireless-networks-under-imperfect-channel-knowledge-wireless-networks-it
<p>In this talk we will explore the effect of delayed or no channel state information (CSI) on physical layer security in various wireless channel models. The assumption of perfect eavesdropper CSI being available at the transmitters, though commonly used in the literature as an idealization, is often impractical as it involves feedback of channel state measurements by the passive eavesdropper to the transmitters. Further, delay and network conditions in the feedback link may also impact the CSI quality available at the transmitters. We will discuss how such imperfections in the CSI available at the transmitters affect physical layer security in various channel models, including the wiretap channel with helpers, multiple access wiretap channels, interference channels with an eavesdropper and broadcast channels with confidential messages, determining, in most cases, the optimal secure degrees of freedom of the networks under imperfect CSI conditions.</p>
2017-01-13 21:15:00 to 2017-01-13 22:15:00Pritam Mukherjee (Postdoctoral fellow, Stanford)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2406Big Steps in Wireless: Applications, Spectrum, and Technology [SystemX Seminar]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/big-steps-wireless-applications-spectrum-and-technology-systemx-seminar
<p>We are at an extraordinary time in wireless communications. Major evolutions are occurring in WAN, LAN, and PAN. 3GPP has a major project to develop a new 5G air interface, called NR (New Radio), and a 5G core network, called NGCN (NextGen Core Network). IEEE 802.11 has been developing 802.11ax—its most important amendment since 802.11n. The Bluetooth SIG has been developing Bluetooth 5. The lines between these air interfaces are being blurred with operators that traditionally use licensed spectrum augmenting their networks with 802.11, and, more recently, with the development of LAA (License Assisted Access) and MulteFire, variants of LTE, operating in unlicensed spectrum. The rapid growth of data traffic and 5G developments are putting pressure on countries to identify and allocate additional licensed spectrum such as 600 MHz, 3.4-3.6 GHz, and 4.4-4.8 GHz. In the US, the FCC recently announced that the allocation of mmWave spectrum: a total of 3.85 GHz of licensed spectrum at 28, 37, and 39 GHz and an additional 7 GHz of unlicensed spectrum resulting in 67-71 GHz being available. Since spectrum cannot always be cleared of existing users, more sophisticated approaches to spectrum sharing are being developed, such as the SAS-based approached being used for 3.5 GHz in the US. For years, the goal has been to drive to higher peak data rates. In the early days of 3G—less than 20 years ago—our peak mobile data speeds were the few hundred kilobits per second. Today, as these peak speeds have reached 1 Gbps, the focus is turning towards providing better service through significantly higher minimum data rates. IoT is causing the optimization of existing air interfaces, leading to eMTC and 802.11ah; the development of specialized air interfaces such NB-IoT; and the development of special IoT capabilities in 5G. The specialized needs of the automobile industry are leading to other optimizations such as the V2X work in 3GPP. Service layers, such as oneM2M, are being developed to isolate applications from communications and to provide a common management platform. This presentation will examine and provide a perspective on developments and technologies at this extraordinary time in communications.</p>
2017-01-13 00:30:00 to 2017-01-13 01:30:00Dr. Edward G. Tiedemann, Jr. (Senior Vice-President, Engineering &amp; Qualcomm Fellow)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2402Challenges and opportunities in improving memory subsystems of modern computer systems [Special Seminar]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/general/challenges-and-opportunities-improving-memory-subsystems-modern-computer-systems
<p>The capacity and bandwidth of DRAM, a de-facto standard main memory for decades, have steadily improved over time by taking advantage of Moore's law. In addition to the capacity and bandwidth scaling, more attention has been drawn recently to other important aspects of memory, such as latency, energy efficiency, and reliability, on main memory DRAM research and development. In this talk, I will summarize my research efforts on improving various aspects of main memory DRAM, such as 1) reducing access latency with asymmetric DRAM bank organization and row-buffer decoupling, 2) improving energy efficiency with a judicious use of silicon interposer and micro-banks, and 3) retaining die yield with low area overhead through DRAM-side caching. In contrast to these studies that require hardware changes and rely on simulators for evaluation, recently I have also been focusing on memory system performance enhancement of existing servers, such as reducing inter-thread interference to memory channels through address remapping/staggering, scatter-gather without bandwidth waste, and selective caching.</p>
2017-01-12 23:30:00 to 2017-01-13 00:30:00Jung Ho Ahn Associate Professor (Seoul National University)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2403Designing and assessing near-eye displays to increase user inclusivity [SCIEN Talk]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/designing-and-assessing-near-eye-displays-increase-user-inclusivity-scien-talk
<p>Recent years have seen impressive growth in near-eye display systems, which are the basis of most virtual and augmented reality experiences. There are, however, a unique set of challenges to designing a display system that is literally strapped to the user's face. With an estimated half of all adults in the United States requiring some level of visual correction, maximizing inclusivity for near-eye displays is essential. I will describe work that combines principles from optics, optometry, and visual perception to identify and address major limitations of near-eye displays both for users with normal vision and those that require common corrective lenses. I will also describe ongoing work assessing the potential for near-eye displays to assist people with less common visual impairments at performing day-to-day tasks.</p>
2017-01-12 00:30:00 to 2017-01-12 01:15:00Emily Cooper (Psychological and Brain Sciences Department, Dartmouth College)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2400The Path Forward on Global Energy &amp; Climate Policyhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/path-forward-global-energy-climate-policy
<p>Join President Obama's principal advisor on energy and climate policy for a wide-ranging discussion on the future of energy and climate policy. Open to Stanford faculty, staff and students.</p>
<hr /><p> </p>
<p>Presented by Stanford Precourt Institute for Energy</p>
2017-01-12 00:15:00 to 2017-01-12 01:30:00Brian C. Deese (Asst. to the President and Senior Advisor)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2405Atomic Collapse in Graphene [AP/Physics Colloquium]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/atomic-collapse-graphene-apphysics-colloquium
<p>Since the discovery that electrons in graphene behave as massless Dirac fermions, the single-atom-thick material has become a fertile playground for testing exotic predictions of quantum electrodynamics, such as Klein tunneling and the fractional quantum Hall effect. Now add to that list atomic collapse, the spontaneous formation of electrons and positrons in the electrostatic field of a superheavy atomic nucleus. The atomic collapse was predicted to manifest itself in quasi-stationary states which have complex-valued energies and which decay rapidly. However, the atoms created artificially in laboratory have nuclear charge only up to Z = 118, which falls short of the predicted threshold for collapse. Interest in this problem has been revived with the advent of graphene, where, because of a large fine structure constant, the collapse is expected for Z of order unity. I will discuss the symmetry aspects of atomic collapse, in particular the anomalous breaking of scale invariance that underpins the collapse phenomenon. I will also describe recent experiments that use scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) to probe atomic collapse near STM-controlled artificial compound nuclei.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Presented by <strong>APPLIED PHYSICS/PHYSICS COLLOQUIUM</strong><br /><em>Professor Stanley S. Hanna Visiting Professorship Program</em></p>
2017-01-11 00:15:00 to 2017-01-11 01:30:00Leonid Levitov (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2401High-Frequency Power Converters [Precourt Institute for Energy Seminar]https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/high-frequency-power-converters-precourt-institute-energy-seminar
<p>Juan's talk will cover how increases in switching frequency enable the miniaturization of power converters and new ways to fabricate and design power converters. It will address how these design techniques can be used in applications spanning biology, healthcare, space propulsion and automotive that use Wide Bandgap Power semiconductors at MHz frequencies. The talk will also discuss losses observed in GaN and SiC devices under high dv/dt conditions.</p>
2017-01-10 00:30:00 to 2017-01-10 01:30:00Juan Rivas-Davila (Stanford EE)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2404SystemX Seminar: Sustaining Silicon Reliability in High-Performance CPU Designhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/systemx-seminar-sustaining-silicon-reliability-high-performance-cpu-design
<p>As high-performance CPUs shrink into advanced CMOS process technologies, thinning dielectrics and dwindling wire interconnects demand an ever-increasing complexity of reliability analysis, modeling, and design techniques. This is particularly true for CPUs in notebook and desktop computers, in which to maximize the user experience, it is critical to maximize the voltage and frequency for the small fraction of the lifetime when peak performance is actually needed. An overview of methodologies and design considerations for maintaining the silicon reliability of high-performance CPUs is presented, with particular focus on dielectric breakdown and electromigration as the two most critical limiters. As dynamic voltage and frequency scaling has become pervasive in the mobile and embedded processor space, these techniques will become essential to a broader spectrum of the semiconductor industry as their respective frequencies continue to increase.</p>
2016-12-16 00:30:00 to 2016-12-16 01:30:00Dr. Tom Burd (Advanced Micro Devices)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2388SmartGrid Seminar: Greening a Top-20 Economy, Energy-Efficient Timely Transportation of Heavy-Duty Truckshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/smartgrid-seminar-greening-top-20-economy-energy-efficient-timely-transportation-heavy
<p>In 2015, the US trucking industry hauls 70.1% of all freight tonnage and collects $726.4 billion in gross freight revenues. This impressive number corresponds to 2.3x of Hong Kong GDP and would rank 19 worldwide if measured against countries. Meanwhile, only 4% of total vehicle population, heavy-duty trucks consume 17.6% of energy in transportation sector (including cars, trucks, airplanes, pipelines, and railways). This alerting observation, together with that fuel cost is the largest operating cost (34%) for truck operators, makes it critical to reduce fuel consumption for cost-effective and environment-friendly heavy-duty truck operation.</p>
<p>In this work, we consider a key yet under-explored problem in heavy-duty truck operation: timely transportation, where a heavy-duty truck travels between two locations across the national highway system subject to a hard deadline constraint. The objective is to minimize the total fuel consumption of the truck, by optimizing both route planning and speed planning. The problem is important for cost-effective and environment-friendly truck operation, and it is uniquely challenging due to its combinatorial nature as well as the need of considering hard deadline constraint. We first show that the problem is NP-Complete; thus exact solution is computational prohibited unless P=NP. We then design a fully polynomial time approximation scheme (FPTAS) that attains an approximation ratio of 1+ \epsilon with a network-size induced complexity of O(mn^2/\epsilon^2), where m and n are the numbers of nodes and edges, respectively. While achieving highly-preferred theoretical performance guarantee, the proposed FPTAS still suffers from long running time when applying to national-wide highway systems with tens of thousands of nodes and edges. Leveraging elegant insights from studying the dual of the original problem, we design a fast subgradient-like solution with O(m+ n log n) complexity. The proposed heuristic allows us to tackle the energy-efficient timely transportation problem on large-scale national highway systems. We further characterize a condition under which our heuristic generates an optimal solution; we also provide performance gap when the condition is not satisfied. We observe that the condition holds in most of the practical instances in numerical experiments, justifying the superior empirical performance of our heuristic. We carry out extensive numerical experiments using real-world truck data over the actual U.S. highway network. The results show that our proposed solutions achieve 17% (resp. 14%) fuel consumption reduction, as compared to a fastest path (resp. shortest path) algorithm adapted from common practice.<br />Overall, we believe that de-carbonizing heavy-duty truck operation is important for the sustainable development of the trucking industry. Our work serves as a call for participation.<br />This is a joint work with Lei Deng and Mohammad Hajiesmaili in CUHK and Haibo Zeng in Virginia Tech.</p>
2016-12-14 21:00:00 to 2016-12-14 22:00:00Professor Minghua Chen (Chinese University of Hong Kong)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2392Stanford Amateur Radio Club meetinghttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/stanford-amateur-radio-club-meeting
<p>We'll be giving a brief introductory talk on various activities the club is currently involved in, such as software defined radio applications, satellite communications, Earth-Moon-Earth communication, radio contesting and just about anything else RF related!</p>
2016-12-14 03:30:00 to 2016-12-14 04:30:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2389Space Environment and Satellite Systems (SESS): Mapping Material Transport in the Upper Atmospherehttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/space-environment-and-satellite-systems-sess-mapping-material-transport-upper
<p>In 2003, water vapor exhaust and iron that ablated during a space shuttle launch reached the lower thermosphere, Earth's neutral atmosphere above 85 km dominated by neutral gas dynamics and driven by diurnal heating. Two to three days later noctilucent clouds appeared in the upper atmosphere, and the iron was detected over the Antarctic [Stevens et al., 2005]. These observations raise an intriguing question: was there structuring in the thermospheric fluid that could have predicted the transport?</p>
<p>Material transport analysis is important for understanding movement of contaminants, products of meteor ablation, and plasma motion in the ionosphere, the charged particle layer embedded in the thermosphere, all of which have space weather impacts. Analysis of coherent structuring provides a way to predict such material transport. However, identification of ionospherethermosphere (IT) structuring requires sustained observation of 2D or 3D flow fields over broad regions, enabled by: distributed remote sensing and data assimilation. Together these provide the means to apply advanced fluid advection analysis for predictive ability in material transport in the upper atmosphere.</p>
<p>In this work, I present recent efforts in distributed sensing and data assimilation of upper atmospheric measurements. The Scintillation Auroral GPS Array (SAGA) consists of six closely spaced Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers designed to monitor fluctuations in signal amplitude and phase. Through spaced-receiver cross-correlation techniques, the array senses motion of the ionospheric irregularities that cause scintillation. The data assimilation method Estimating Model Parameters from Ionospheric Reverse Engineering (EMPIRE) ingests GPS-derived electron densities and Fabry-Perot interferometer (FPI) measurements of line-of-sight thermospheric neutral winds for the first time to provide regional estimates of horizontal neutral winds and ion convection.</p>
<p>Finally, I present a method of fluid analysis gaining widespread attention in geophysical fluid dynamics: Lagrangian Coherent Structures (LCSs). In the Lagrangian frame, which flows with the particles in contrast to an Eulerian fixed mesh frame, barriers in material transport can be numerically and objectively identified. These barriers are LCSs, manifolds of maximal separation in a flow domain. I show that the locations of global thermospheric LCSs are expected to be at mid-to-high latitudes, based on the empirical Horizontal Wind Model (HWM 2014). Such analysis can in future be applied to data-derived flow fields to investigate IT material transport such as that of the space shuttle plume.</p>
2016-12-12 21:00:00 to 2016-12-12 22:00:00Prof. Seebany Datta Barua (Illinois Institute of Technology)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2379Finals Weekhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/finals-week-0
<p>Finals week, Fall quarter</p>
2016-12-12 17:00:00 to 2016-12-17 01:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2373Fuse Undergrad Holiday Partyhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/fuse-undergrad-holiday-party
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<p>Drop by Packard 318 for cookiEE decorating, hot chocolate, and a chance to hang out with your other EE friends (or meet new EE friends)!</p>
<p>RSVP here: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/614057768780643/" target="_blank">https://www.facebook.com/events/614057768780643/</a></p>
2016-12-10 00:00:00 to 2016-12-10 03:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2382EE Wellness Event: EE Friendshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/ee-wellness-event-ee-friends
<p>Take some time out of your Friday study sessions to enjoy some pizza and the company of your pEErs!</p>
2016-12-09 20:00:00 to 2016-12-09 21:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2378EE402A Colloquiumhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/ee402a-colloquium-3
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<p>The US-Asia Technology Management Center seminars are open to the public at no charge. Stanford students may register through Axess in course EE402A for 1 unit seminar credit.</p>
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2016-12-09 00:30:00 to 2016-12-09 01:30:00TBAhttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/2316SystemX Seminar: hosted by Prof. H. Tom Sohhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/systemx-seminar-hosted-prof-h-tom-soh
<p>Diabetes, which affects almost 30 million Americans is the leading cause of kidney failure, lower-limb amputations, and adult-onset blindness. More than 20% of health care spending is for people with diagnosed diabetes. Diabetes technology is a term created in 1999 referring to the interface between the biological sciences and the physical sciences. The term describes engineered technologies applied primarily to monitor and treat diabetes. Currently eight of the most productive engineered technologies that are being applied to diabetes include: 1) blood glucose monitoring; 2) subcutaneous continuous glucose monitoring; 3) wearable and implantable sensors; 4) insulin pumps; 5) closed loop systems (artificial pancreas); 6) telemedicine / mobile health; 7) big data and precision medicine; and 8) cybersecurity of connected devices. This presentation will summarize current advances in these eight technologies and present a major unmet need for each of them. Barriers to achieving maximal benefits from all these technologies can be overcome by creative engineers, to meet the needs of patients with diabetes.</p>
2016-12-09 00:30:00 to 2016-12-09 01:30:00David C. Klonoff, M.D. (UCSF)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2367EE Wellness Event: Dog Pettinghttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/ee-wellness-event-dog-petting
<p>Take a Break, Pet a Dog!</p>
<p><strong>Take a break from studying and pet some pups. </strong></p>
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<p><em>Hosted by Terman Engineering Library.</em></p>
2016-12-08 23:00:00 to 2016-12-09 00:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2377Special Seminar: Neuroscience tools, or how we found a detailed circuit for olfactory learninghttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/special-seminar-neuroscience-tools-or-how-we-found-detailed-circuit-olfactory-learning
<p>The tools of modern neuroscience are becoming sophisticated enough that a mechanistic description of brain operation is now possible, at least in some cases. This talk will cover the main tools and techniques that are now being used to examine the brains of insects. This include methods for both observing and manipulating neurons in intact and behaving animals, and structural techniques that determining connectivity down to the level of individual neurons and synapses. The second part of the talk will illustrate how these methods have been used to elucidate the operation of the portion of the fly brain that remembers olfactory preferences. This leads to a detailed, circuit level description of how at least one learning process in one animal works.</p>
2016-12-08 22:00:00 to 2016-12-08 23:00:00Louis Scheffer (Howard Hughes Medical Institute&#039;s Janelia Research Campus)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2385EE Wellness Event: Managing Stress Workshophttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/ee-wellness-event-managing-stress-workshop
<p>Learn helpful techniques for combating situational stress.</p>
2016-12-08 01:00:00 to 2016-12-08 01:45:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2376CS Department Lecture Series (CS300)https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/cs-department-lecture-series-cs300-34
<p>Offered to incoming first-year PhD students in the Autumn quarter.</p>
<p>The seminar gives CS faculty the opportunity to speak about their research, which allows new CS PhD students the chance to learn about the professors and their research before permanently aligning.</p>
<p><strong>4:30-5:15, <span>Subhasish Mitra</span></strong></p>
<p><strong>5:15-6:00, <span>Silvio Savarese</span></strong></p>
2016-12-08 00:30:00 to 2016-12-08 02:00:00Subhasish Mitra and Silvio Savaresehttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/2270EE380 Computer Systems Colloquium: Charting a Cybersecurity Path for the Next Administrationhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/ee380-computer-systems-colloquium-charting-cybersecurity-path-next-administration
<p>In February 2016, President Obama established the Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity, and charged it with developing a cybersecurity roadmap for the next Administration. On Friday, December 2, the Commission released its final report. As one of the 12 commissioners responsible for the report, I will brief the major themes and recommendations in the report, provide some personal reflections, and answer questions as best I can.</p>
2016-12-08 00:30:00 to 2016-12-08 01:30:00Herb Lin Senior Research Scholar, Center for International Security and Cooperation Research Fellow, Hoover Institution (Stanford)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2380SCIEN Talk: Electronic augmentation of body functionshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/scien-talk-7
<p>Electrical nature of neural signaling allows efficient bi-directional electrical communication with the nervous system. Currently, electro-neural interfaces are utilized for partial restoration of sensory functions, such as hearing and sight, actuation of prosthetic limbs and restoration of tactile sensitivity, enhancement of tear secretion, and many others. Deep brain stimulation helps controlling tremor in patients with Parkinson's disease, improve muscle control in dystonia, and in other neurological disorders. With technological advances and progress in understanding of the neural systems, these interfaces may allow not only restoration or augmentation of the lost functions, but also expansion of our natural capabilities – sensory, cognitive and others. I will review the state of the field and future directions of technological development.</p>
2016-12-07 00:30:00 to 2016-12-07 01:30:00Daniel Palanker (Stanford University)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2278EE Wellness Event: Coloring sessionhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/ee-wellness-event-coloring-session
<p>Coloring book session!</p>
<p>Research has shown taking time to color can help increase focus and help relieve some stress.</p>
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<p><strong>We are providing coloring book pages and colored pencils – join us and color away!</strong></p>
2016-12-06 20:00:00 to 2016-12-06 22:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2375CS Department Lecture Series (CS300)https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/cs-department-lecture-series-cs300-33
<p>Offered to incoming first-year PhD students in the Autumn quarter.</p>
<p>The seminar gives CS faculty the opportunity to speak about their research, which allows new CS PhD students the chance to learn about the professors and their research before permanently aligning.</p>
<p><strong>4:30-5:15, <span>Phil Levis</span></strong></p>
<p><strong>5:15-6:00, <span>Ron Fedkiw</span></strong></p>
2016-12-06 00:30:00 to 2016-12-06 02:00:00Phil Levis and Ron Fedkiwhttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/2269SystemX Seminar: Development of RF Circuitshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/systemx-seminar-development-rf-circuits
<p>Additive manufacturing (AM) technologies and three dimensional (3-D) printing have recently received increased interest as they enable the development of cost effective, fast production cycle, environmental friendly and complex components. Following broad applications in the areas of bio-engineering, medicine, mechanical parts and tools, consumer goods and so on, additive manufacturing technologies have been progressively expanded into high frequency applications over the last few years. AM technologies have shown great potential in the fabrication of lightweight, flexible low-cost passive RF circuits while avoiding the use of conventional higher cost microfabrication and cleanroom facilities. Also, they enable the design and development of novel circuits that are difficult to achieve using conventional microlithography approaches and micro-machining.</p>
<p>In this presentation, we will discuss some recent advancements and challenges of utilizing Polyjet and Aerosol Jet 3D printing technologies for the development of microwave and mm-wave components that could pave the way for the mass fabrication of low cost wireless communication systems and sensors. Examples include a complete 3D printed RF line, 3D interconnects and transmission lines up to D-band (110-170 GHz), 3D packaging of an X-band low-noise amplifier, Ka-band 3D printed antennas and 3D printed cavity resonators and filters.</p>
2016-12-06 00:30:00 to 2016-12-06 01:30:00John Papapolymerou (Michigan State University)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2371EE Wellness Event: CAPS consultationhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/ee-wellness-event-caps-consultation
<p>Free 20 minute consultations - CAPS staff will help you discover personalized resources to manage stress.</p>
<p><strong>A sign-up sheet will be posted on the door of the CAPS office (Packard 123) at noon</strong>.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Just come back shortly before the time you signed up for your free consultation.</p>
2016-12-05 21:00:00 to 2016-12-05 23:00:00CAPS staffhttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/2374Dead Week/Last Week of the Quarterhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/dead-weeklast-week-quarter-0
<p>Last week of classes, Fall quarter</p>
2016-12-05 17:00:00 to 2016-12-10 01:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2372EE402A Colloquium: A Startup Company’s Solution for Desulfurization and CCS in Chinahttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/ee402a-colloquium-2
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<p>Founded in 1994, the Clean Energy Project Tech Inc. (CEPT) was the first enterprise group in China to specialize in fossil energy air pollution control and emission reduction. CEPT's system offers an alternative to more expensive and energy-intensive refining of bunker fuels.</p>
<p>At CEPT, Mr. Peng helped develop a new, proprietary system that uses natural seawater (NSW) scrubbing for flue gas desulfurization (FGD) for coal-fired electric power plants in China. With the CEPT system in place, the Houshi power plant of Zhangzhou (Fujian Province), a 6000 MW complex, was elected the first "National Environmentally Friendly Engineering" project in China in 2006. Similar systems are now in over 40 power plants in China.</p>
<p>In 2009, Mr. Peng created the California company, Marine ProTech, to commercialize the new NSW FGD system for the worldwide shipping industry. Their marine systems have been implemented in successful field trials on cargo ships and are currently undergoing final adjustments for commercial use.</p>
<p>In 2015, Mr. Peng organized the Zero Carbon Energy Innovation Union (ZCEIU) in California, which aims to further promote NSW for carbon reduction, namely Ocean-based Carbon Capture and Storage.</p>
<p>Additional financial support of this series from the The Miner Foundation</p>
<hr /><p>The US-Asia Technology Management Center seminars are open to the public at no charge. Stanford students may register through Axess in course EE402A for 1 unit seminar credit.</p>
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2016-12-02 00:30:00 to 2016-12-02 01:30:00SiGan Peng (President &amp; CEO, CEPT/MarinePro Tech Inc.)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2315SystemX Seminar: Architectures and Topologies for High-Frequency, High-Density Power Conversionhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/systemx-seminar-architectures-and-topologies-high-frequency-high-density-power
<p>Power electronics are a key element in all kinds of systems and are important for addressing the world's energy challenges. This talk describes emerging approaches in the design of power electronics that seek to address the twin challenges of miniaturization and improved performance. Through architectures and topologies that minimize magnetic energy storage, the scaling limitations of magnetic components can be offset, leading to smaller, higher-performance power converters. One such approach is the use of hybrid switched-capacitor/magnetic conversion. To illustrate this, the talk describes a hybrid "multi-track" converter for telecom applications that provides a 5:1 input voltage range while achieving a power density of &gt; 450 W/in3, over 3 times that of the best comparable commercial design. The use of greatly increased switching frequencies to provide miniaturization is also explored. We demonstrate this in the context of ac-dc converters for supplying low voltage from the grid, and show a prototype design operating in the 3-10 MHz range that achieves greatly improved power density as compared to conventional converters.</p>
2016-12-02 00:30:00 to 2016-12-02 01:30:00David Perreault (MIT)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2366ISL Colloquium: Reinforcement Learning: From Vision to Action and Backhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/isl-colloquium-reinforcement-learning-vision-action-and-back
<p>Stemming in part from the great successes of other areas of Machine Learning, in particular the recent success of Deep Learning, there is renewed hope and interest in Reinforcement Learning (RL) from the wider applications communities. Indeed, there is a recent burst of new and exciting progress in both theory and practice of RL. I will describe some theoretical results from my own group on a simple new connection between planning horizon and overfitting in RL, as well as some results on combining RL with Deep Learning in Minecraft, and Zero-Shot Generalization across compositional tasks. I will conclude with some lookahead at what we can do, both as theoreticians and those that collect data, to accelerate the impact of RL.</p>
2016-12-02 00:15:00 to 2016-12-02 01:15:00Satinder Singh (University of Michigan)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2365SmartGrid Seminar: Efficiency of Connection Charges for Distribution Systems with Distributed Energy Resourceshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/smartgrid-seminar-22
<p>The advent of several disruptive innovations in distributed renewable generation, battery storage, and smart meter technology is transforming the electric power industry. A rising concern of this transformation is the impact of distributed energy resources (DERs) on the financial viability of traditional regulated distribution utilities. In particular, under volumetric and net-metering tariffs, the integration of behind-the-meter DERs, including storage systems, could compromise the ability of grid operators to recover their fixed operational and capital expenditures, which leads to the so-called "death spiral" hypothesis. In this talk, we examine the role of connection charges for a regulated monopolistic retailer who serves heterogeneous consumers. We examine two DER integration models: (i) the behind-the-meter integration by consumers under a net metering tariff, and (ii) a centralized integration by the retailer. For both cases, we obtain the optimal ex-ante two-part tariff consisting of connection and volumetric charges. The structure of the optimal two-part tariff reveals how the benefits and costs of DERs are allocated optimally across consumers. While the optimal two-part tariff yields the same social welfare under the two integration models, the benefits of DER integration are distributed very differently among consumers who have different integration capabilities. Our results also show that the absence of the connection charge, rather than net-metering, is the main cause of economic inefficiency. Results from empirical studies also illustrate the potential gain for consumers when the optimal two-part tariff is adopted.</p>
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<p><strong>About the SmartGrid Seminar:</strong> </p>
<p>Our speakers will discuss exciting new ideas and technologies that are changing the electricity industry. The theme of the seminar series is on smart grids and energy systems, with speakers from academic institutions and industry. The hour-long seminars, including ample time for discussion, are held at 1:30 pm every Thursday. Open to all Stanford students, faculty and staff.</p>
2016-12-01 21:30:00 to 2016-12-01 22:30:00Lang Tong (Cornell University)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2320CS Department Lecture Series (CS300)https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/cs-department-lecture-series-cs300-32
<p>Offered to incoming first-year PhD students in the Autumn quarter.</p>
<p>The seminar gives CS faculty the opportunity to speak about their research, which allows new CS PhD students the chance to learn about the professors and their research before permanently aligning.</p>
<p><strong>4:30-5:15, <span>Dan Boneh</span></strong></p>
<p><strong>5:15-6:00, <span>Aaron Sidford</span></strong></p>
2016-12-01 00:30:00 to 2016-12-01 02:00:00Dan Boneh and Aaron Sidfordhttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/2268SCIEN Talk: Towards Socially-aware AIhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/scien-talk-6
<p>Over the past sixty years, Intelligent Machines have made great progress in playing games, tagging images in isolation, and recently making decisions for self-driving vehicles. Despite these advancements, they are still far from making decisions in social scenes and effectively assisting humans in public spaces such as terminals, malls, campuses, or any crowded urban environment. To overcome these limitations, I claim that we need to empower machines with social intelligence, i.e., the ability to get along well with others and facilitate mutual cooperation. This is crucial to design future generations of smart spaces that adapt to the behavior of humans for efficiency, or develop autonomous machines that assist in crowded public spaces (e.g., delivery robots, or self-navigating segways).</p>
<p>In this talk, I will present my work towards socially-aware machines that can understand human social dynamics and learn to forecast them. First, I will highlight the machine vision techniques behind understanding the behavior of more than 100 million individuals captured by multi-modal cameras in urban spaces. I will show how to use sparsity promoting priors to extract meaningful information about human behavior. Second, I will introduce a new deep learning method to forecast human social behavior. The causality behind human behavior is an interplay between both observable and non-observable cues (e.g., intentions). For instance, when humans walk into crowded urban environments such as a busy train terminal, they obey a large number of (unwritten) common sense rules and comply with social conventions. They typically avoid crossing groups and keep a personal distance to their surrounding. I will present detailed insights on how to learn these interactions from millions of trajectories. I will describe a new recurrent neural network that can jointly reason on correlated sequences and forecast human trajectories in crowded scenes. It opens new avenues of research in learning the causalities behind the world we observe. I will conclude my talk by mentioning some ongoing work in applying these techniques to social robots, and the future generations of smart hospitals.</p>
<p>More Information: <a href="http://web.stanford.edu/~alahi/" target="_blank">http://web.stanford.edu/~alahi/</a></p>
2016-11-30 00:30:00 to 2016-11-30 01:30:00Dr. Alexandre Alahi (Stanford University)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2277Applied Physics/Physics Colloquium: The Dawn of Gravitational-Wave Astrophysicshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/applied-physicsphysics-colloquium-35
<p>The very first observing run of the Advanced LIGO detectors led to the discovery of binary-black-hole inspiral and merger events, and overnight we got launched into the era of gravitational-wave astrophysics. In this talk I will review the key results from the recent LIGO data search, signal characterization, and measurements of source properties. I will discuss how this observation enables the first tests of general relativity in the strong-field regime and what this discovery implies for black-hole astrophysics.</p>
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<p>Held Tuesdays at 4:30 pm in the William R. Hewlett Teaching Center, room 200. Refreshments in the lobby of Varian Physics at 4:15 pm.</p>
<p>Autumn 2016/2017, Committee: R. Blandford (Chair), A, Kapitulnik, R. Laughlin, L. Senatore</p>
2016-11-30 00:30:00 to 2016-11-30 01:30:00Vicky Kalogera (Northwestern University)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2291CS Department Lecture Series (CS300)https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/cs-department-lecture-series-cs300-31
<p>Offered to incoming first-year PhD students in the Autumn quarter.</p>
<p>The seminar gives CS faculty the opportunity to speak about their research, which allows new CS PhD students the chance to learn about the professors and their research before permanently aligning.</p>
<p><strong>4:30-5:15, <span>John Mitchell</span></strong></p>
<p><strong>5:15-6:00, <span>James Zou</span></strong></p>
2016-11-29 00:30:00 to 2016-11-29 02:00:00John Mitchell and James Zouhttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/2267Thanskgiving Break - no classeshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/general/thanskgiving-break-no-classes
<p><img src="https://ee.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/images/Screen%20Shot%202016-08-10%20at%204.40.20%20PM.png" alt="" /></p>
<h2>Enjoy Thanksgiving Break!</h2>
2016-11-21 16:00:00 to 2016-11-26 01:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2352Fuse! Study nighthttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/fuse-study-night-21
<p>Autumn quarter '16 study nights are every Thursday at 8:30pm in the Fuse room (Packard 318).</p>
<p>Snacks will be provided to fuel good work. We hope to see you there!</p>
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<p><em><strong>-Fuse</strong></em></p>
2016-11-18 04:30:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2294EE402A Colloquiumhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/ee402a-colloquium-1
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<p>The US-Asia Technology Management Center seminars are open to the public at no charge. Stanford students may register through Axess in course EE402A for 1 unit seminar credit.</p>
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2016-11-18 00:30:00 to 2016-11-18 01:30:00Dr. Sophon Sirisattha (TISTR)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2314SystemX Seminarhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/systemx-seminar-47
<p>We live in the era of the sharing economy, with open innovation and the rise of community collaboration in open source software and 3D design. Even though, with the stimulation of the Maker movement and hardware startup accelerators, hardware innovation is heading in the same direction, it still has not caught up.</p>
<p>Why? There are technical and economic challenges that are specific to hardware that must be addressed. Mr. Kassem will share how efabless is blazing the trail to stimulate a medium where engineers and creative product developers worldwide are connected and enabled to collaborate in defining, designing and making new hardware products customized to the countless application and markets.</p>
2016-11-18 00:30:00 to 2016-11-18 01:30:00Mohamed Kassem (efabless)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2325CS Department Lecture Series (CS300)https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/cs-department-lecture-series-cs300-30
<p>Offered to incoming first-year PhD students in the Autumn quarter.</p>
<p>The seminar gives CS faculty the opportunity to speak about their research, which allows new CS PhD students the chance to learn about the professors and their research before permanently aligning.</p>
<p><strong>4:30-5:15, <span>Emma Brunskill</span></strong></p>
<p><strong>5:15-6:00, <span>Doug James</span></strong></p>
2016-11-17 00:30:00 to 2016-11-17 02:00:00Emma Brunskill and Doug Jameshttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/2266EE380: The Time-Less Datacenterhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/ee380-time-less-datacenter
<p>We describe, and demonstrate, a novel foundation for datacenter communication: a new "event based" protocol that can dispense with the need for conventional heartbeats and timeouts at the network layer --paving a new path for efficient recovery for distributed algorithms as they scale. We then show how this can be composed into arbitrary graph-based distributed communications for application infrastructures.</p>
<p>A modern datacenter has many thousands of servers connected to each other through many hundreds of switches. The switches are usually configured into a spanning tree with the servers at the leaves. While this approach simplifies routing, it has some serious shortcomings. For example, servers don't know when an interior link has failed, so they use timeouts as a way of guessing that they need to fail over to a new path. Since failovers generate lots of messages, they often result in other servers timing out. Sometimes, several minutes elapse before the system quiesces and normal operations can resume. These failover and latency storms would be tolerable if they were rare, but they have been observed to occur several times a day in modern datacenters.</p>
<p>The Earth Computing Network Fabric (ECNF) takes a different approach. An ECNF segment within a datacenter has no switches within its own fabric. Instead, each cell combines the compute functions of a server with the routing functions of a switch. Each cell has multiple ports (7±2), and each port of a cell is directly connected to a port of another cell via a link. Because the link is a dedicated channel between exactly two cells, we can use the Earth Computing Link Protocol (ECLP) instead of standard protocols, such as Ethernet or TCP/IP.</p>
<p>In this talk, we'll explain the problems with the way datacenters are built today and show how the Earth Computing design avoids many difficult problems while providing additional functionality.</p>
<p>If you can, attend this talk live. Following the formal presentation, we are planning to demonstrate and discuss "interesting things" off camera. For example, questions on the proprietary nature of the Implementation will be addressed only during the extended session when the camera is turned off.</p>
<p>The following background may be helpful to computer science students unfamiliar with the nature of time in physics:</p>
<ul><li>2014 EE380 Talk. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfvouFIVCmQ`" target="_blank">The physics of time introduction for Computer Science</a>).</li>
<li>2016 PWL Talk. "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWF3QnfihL4" target="_blank">Lamport's Unfinished revolution</a>", starts at timestamp 32:30).</li>
</ul>2016-11-17 00:30:00 to 2016-11-17 01:30:00Paul L. Borrill and Alan H. Karp (EARTH Computing)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2348SCIEN Talk: Designing a smart wearable camera for blind and visually impaired peoplehttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/scien-talk-5
<p>Horus Technology was founded in July 2014 with the goal of creating a smart wearable camera for blind and visually impaired people featuring intelligent algorithms that could understand the environment around its user and describe it out loud. Two years later, Horus has a working prototype being tested by a number of blind people in Europe and North America. Harnessing the power of portable GPUs, stereo vision and deep learning algorithms, Horus can read texts in different languages, learn and recognize faces, objects and identify obstacles. Designing a wearable device, we had to face a number of challenges and difficult choices. We will describe our systems, our design choices for both software and hardware and we will end with a small demo of Horus capabilities.</p>
2016-11-16 00:30:00 to 2016-11-16 01:30:00Saverio Murgia (Horus Technology)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2276Applied Physics/Physics Colloquium: Spotting the Elusive Majorana Under the Microscopehttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/applied-physicsphysics-colloquium-34
<p>There has been considerable interest in creating condensed matter systems that host boundary Majorana fermions. This goal is motivated in part by Majorana fermions' potential use in topological qubits to perform fault-tolerant computation aided by their non-Abelian characteristics. Recently, we have proposed a new platform for the realization of Majorana fermions in condensed matter systems, based on chains of magnetic atoms on the surface of a superconductor. This platform lends itself to measurements with the scanning tunneling microscope (STM) that can be used to directly visualize the Majorana edge mode with both high energy and spatial resolution. Using unique STM instrumentation, we have succeeded in creating this platform and have observed the predicted signatures of localized Majorana zero mode. I will describe our Majorana platform, the experiments to date, and the outlook for further experiments on Majoranas fermions in condensed matter systems.</p>
<hr /><p>Held Tuesdays at 4:30 pm in the William R. Hewlett Teaching Center, room 200. Refreshments in the lobby of Varian Physics at 4:15 pm.</p>
<p>Autumn 2016/2017, Committee: R. Blandford (Chair), A, Kapitulnik, R. Laughlin, L. Senatore</p>
2016-11-16 00:30:00 to 2016-11-16 01:30:00Ali Yazdani (Princeton University)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2290Annual SystemX Fall Conferencehttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/general/annual-systemx-fall-conference
<p>Details to become available through the SystemX Alliance website, <a href="https://systemx.stanford.edu/" target="_blank">Systemx.Stanford.edu</a></p>
<p> </p>
2016-11-15 17:00:00 to 2016-11-17 20:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2252CS Department Lecture Series (CS300)https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/cs-department-lecture-series-cs300-29
<p>Offered to incoming first-year PhD students in the Autumn quarter.</p>
<p>The seminar gives CS faculty the opportunity to speak about their research, which allows new CS PhD students the chance to learn about the professors and their research before permanently aligning.</p>
<p><strong>4:30-5:15, <span>James Landay</span></strong></p>
<p><strong>5:15-6:00, <span>Dan Jurafsky</span></strong></p>
2016-11-15 00:30:00 to 2016-11-15 02:00:00James Landay and Dan Jurafskyhttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/2265A Paradigm Shift in Estimation and Control for Linear Dynamic Systems with Additive Cauchy Uncertaintyhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/paradigm-shift-estimation-and-control-linear-dynamic-systems-additive-cauchy
<p>A new class of implementable real-time vector-state estimators and stochastic controllers for linear dynamic systems with additive heavy-tailed Cauchy process and measurement noises is discussed. The estimation methodology for a vector-state, linear dynamic system with additive Cauchy noises was addressed by developing a recursion for the analytic measurement update and propagation of the character function of the unnormalized conditional probability density function (ucpdf) of the state given the measurement history. Other than the Kalman filter, the current estimation paradigm that is based on the light-tailed Gaussian pdf, this Cauchy estimator stands alone in being the only other estimator for linear multi-variable systems, which has an analytic recursive structure. This Cauchy estimator resolves efficiently uncertainties due to an impulse in the measurement or process noises. In fact, in contrast to the Kalman filter, the conditional probability density function for the Cauchy system is not always unimodal. When addressing the stochastic control problem with Cauchy noise, a cost criterion is constructed using the conditional expectation of a product of Cauchy functional forms of quadratics of the state and control variables, which is reminiscent of the cost criterion for the linear-exponential-Gaussian control problem. The conditional expectation of the cost function can be obtained in closed form. The cost criterion of this stochastic model predictive controller, although analytic, is not convex. Nevertheless, there is a strong relationship between the global optimum and the system parameters. The currently available results for estimation and control entail significant analytical and numerical complexities due to the rich analytic form of the character function of the ucpdf, which produces a sum of terms that grows at each measurement update. Our primary goal is to determine implementable real-time vector-state estimators and stochastic controllers by using simplifications and approximations that are consistent with the fundamental structure of the algorithms.</p>
2016-11-11 22:00:00 to 2016-11-11 23:00:00Jason L. Speyer (UCLA)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2347IT-Forum: Data-driven methods for sparse network estimationhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/it-forum-data-driven-methods-sparse-network-estimation
<p>Graphical model is a probabilistic model for which a graph is used to represent the conditional independence between random variables. Such models have become extremely popular tools for modeling complex real-world systems. Learning graphical models is of fundamental importance in machine learning and statistics and is often challenged by the fact that only a small number of samples are available relative to the number of variables. Several methods (such as Graphical Lasso) have been proposed to address this problem. However, there is a glaring lack of concrete case studies that clearly illustrate the limitations of the existing computational methods for learning graphical models. In this talk, I will propose a circuit model that can be used as a platform for testing the performance of different statistical approaches. I will also develop new insights into regularized semidefinite program (SDP) problems by working through the Graphical Lasso algorithm. Graphical Lasso is a popular method for learning the structure of a Gaussian model, which relies on solving a computationally-expensive SDP. I will derive sufficient conditions under which the solution of this large-scale SDP has a simple formula. I will illustrates our results on electrical circuits and fMRI data for finding brain networks.</p>
2016-11-11 21:15:00 to 2016-11-11 22:15:00Somayeh Sojoudi (Assistant Project Scientist, UC Berkeley)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2345Fuse! Study nighthttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/fuse-study-night-21
<p>Autumn quarter '16 study nights are every Thursday at 8:30pm in the Fuse room (Packard 318).</p>
<p>Snacks will be provided to fuel good work. We hope to see you there!</p>
<p> </p>
<p><em><strong>-Fuse</strong></em></p>
2016-11-11 04:30:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2294EE402A Colloquiumhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/ee402a-colloquium-0
<p>The US-Asia Technology Management Center seminars are open to the public at no charge. Stanford students may register through Axess in course EE402A for 1 unit seminar credit.</p>
2016-11-11 00:30:00 to 2016-11-11 01:30:00James Miller (FCC)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2313SystemX Seminarhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/systemx-seminar-46
<p>One of the long-standing challenges in the RF community has been the creation of inexpensive millimeter-wave sensors, primarily due to the need for extremely high frequencies (typically in excess of 60-100 GHz). By switching from electromagnetic waves to ultrasound, the wave velocity and associated frequencies decrease by five orders of magnitude, hence allowing the creation of inexpensive CMOS-based sensor ASIC's employing sonar-like techniques to achieve extremely high accuracy sensors.</p>
<p>We show the application of such an ultrasound sensor to the problem of multitouch and force sensing, demonstrating the ability to sense multiple fingers and per-finger force/pressure levels. Unlike conventional capacitive touch sensors, an ultrasound-based sensor is not restricted to planar glass surfaces; it can sense equally well on complex curved surfaces, as well as metal or plastic substrates.</p>
2016-11-11 00:30:00 to 2016-11-11 01:30:00Dr Sam Sheng (Sentons)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2324OSA Special Seminarhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/osa-special-seminar-1
<p>Unique manufacturing techniques enable the integration of complex optical set-ups, such as optical parametric oscillators (OPO), into highly stable products. We will discuss two such laser products that have been recently developed and released on the market: The Hübner C-WAVE, which is tunable in the visible (450-650nm) and NIR (900-1300nm); and the Cobolt Odin, which operates in the IR (2-5µm). The talk will focus on bringing new optical technology from the benchtop to market-ready products. We will also present performance data and application results from studies in atomic physics, single molecule and gas spectroscopy, and the characterization of integrated optical devices using the aforementioned products.</p>
2016-11-11 00:15:00 to 2016-11-11 01:00:00Melissa Haahr and Dr. Niklas Waasemhttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/2341EE380 Computer Systems Colloquiumhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/ee380-computer-systems-colloquium-39
<p>With the imminent demise of Moore's Law, the importance of parallel computing is only increasing. However, efficient parallel computing with ease of programmability still remains elusive. Shared memory multiprocessors and online Transaction processing systems make it easier on the programmer. Current systems either exclusively use physical time to order transactions, or logical time (e.g., Lamport clocks) and are limited in performance and/or scalability.</p>
<p>We introduce a new concept of time called physi-logical (physiological for ease of pronunciation!) time that combines the strengths of physical and logical time while avoiding their problems. The key advantage of physiological time is that it enables an application to move memory operations (load/stores) forward and backwards in time in order to avoid conflicts. We have designed, implemented and evaluated two time-traveling systems in the form of a new cache coherence protocol Tardis for multi-core CPUs and a new concurrency control algorithm TicToc for on-line transaction processing database systems. Both algorithms are simpler, more scalable, and perform better than existing state-of-the-art implementations. The talk will end with describing how physiological time can be used in a distributed operating environment.</p>
<p>Joint work with Xiangyao Yu, Andy Pavlo and Daniel Sanchez.</p>
<hr /><p> </p>
<p><strong>The Stanford EE Computer Systems Colloquium (EE380)</strong><span> meets on Wednesdays 4:30-5:45 throughout the academic year. Talks are given before a live audience in Room B03 in the basement of the Gates Computer Science Building on the Stanford Campus. The live talks (and the videos hosted at Stanford and on YouTube) are open to the public.</span></p>
2016-11-10 00:30:00 to 2016-11-10 01:30:00Srinivas Devadas (MIT)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2243CS Department Lecture Series (CS300)https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/cs-department-lecture-series-cs300-28
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<p>Offered to incoming first-year PhD students in the Autumn quarter.</p>
<p>The seminar gives CS faculty the opportunity to speak about their research, which allows new CS PhD students the chance to learn about the professors and their research before permanently aligning.</p>
<p><strong>4:30-5:15, <span>Ken Salisbury</span></strong></p>
<p><strong>5:15-6:00, <span>Noah Goodman</span></strong></p>
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</div>
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2016-11-10 00:30:00 to 2016-11-10 02:00:00Ken Salisbury and Noah Goodmanhttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/2264SCIEN Talkhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/scien-talk-4
<p>This work presents the development of a quantum dot-based photosensitive film engineered to be integrated on standard CMOS process wafers. It enables the design of exceptionally high performance, reliable image sensors. Quantum dot solids absorb light much more rapidly than typical silicon-based photodiodes do, and with the ability to tune the effective material bandgap, quantum dot-based imagers enable higher quantum efficiency over extended spectral bands, both in the Visible and IR regions of the spectrum. Moreover, a quantum dot-based image sensor enables desirable functions such as ultra-small pixels with low crosstalk, high full well capacity, global shutter and wide dynamic range at a relatively low manufacturing cost. At InVisage, we have optimized the manufacturing process flow and are now able to produce high-end image sensors for both visible and NIR in quantity.</p>
<hr /><p> </p>
<p>The Stanford Center for Image Systems Engineering (SCIEN) is a partnership between the Stanford School of Engineering and technology companies developing imaging systems for the enhancement of human communication.</p>
2016-11-10 00:30:00 to 2016-11-10 01:15:00Dr. Emanuele Mandelli (InVisage Technologies)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2275Applied Physics/Physics Colloquiumhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/applied-physicsphysics-colloquium-33
<p>We live in an emergent universe in which interactions between the basic building blocks of matter and their environment give rise to unpredicted and unexpected emergent behavior at every scale. As physicists we seek to identify the organizing principles responsible for that behavior, construct soluble models that incorporate these, and explain experiment. I illustrate this approach to understanding emergent behavior in quantum matter through three examples: collective modes and quasiparticles in electron and helium, liquids; the emergence of superconductivity in conventional and unconventional superconductors, nuclei, and neutron stars; and the emergence of heavy electrons and quantum critical behavior in Kondo lattice materials.</p>
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<p>Held Tuesdays at 4:30 pm in the William R. Hewlett Teaching Center, room 200. Refreshments in the lobby of Varian Physics at 4:15 pm.</p>
<p>Autumn 2016/2017, Committee: R. Blandford (Chair), A, Kapitulnik, R. Laughlin, L. Senatore</p>
2016-11-09 00:30:00 to 2016-11-09 01:30:00David Pines (Santa Fe Institute and UC Davis)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2289lab64: VR office hourshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/lab64-vr-office-hours
<p>VR Office Hours: Jordan Cazamias will be holding weekly office hours at the new on-campus makerspace, lab 64, starting Tuesday. <br />Come by if you want to ask about VR stuff, request resources/software you need for a project, try out demos or just hangout!</p>
2016-11-09 00:00:00 to 2016-11-09 02:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2340CS Department Lecture Series (CS300)https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/cs-department-lecture-series-cs300-27
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<p>Offered to incoming first-year PhD students in the Autumn quarter.</p>
<p>The seminar gives CS faculty the opportunity to speak about their research, which allows new CS PhD students the chance to learn about the professors and their research before permanently aligning.</p>
<p><strong>4:30-5:15, <span>Kunle Olukotun</span></strong></p>
<p><strong>5:15-6:00, <span>Jure Leskovec</span></strong></p>
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2016-11-08 00:30:00 to 2016-11-08 02:00:00Kunle Olukotun and Jure Leskovechttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/2263Kailath Lecture, 2016https://ee.stanford.edu/event/general/kailath-lecture-2016
<p>Looking at the natural, life, and social sciences from the point of view of computation often results in unexpected insights, and progress in important problems. I will focus on some recent work in the life sciences: Evolution of a population through sexual reproduction can be rethought of as a repeated game between genes played through a well known, and powerful, algorithm. When selection acts not on genes alone but on gene combinations, fixation can take exponentially many generations. Finally, we speculate on the possibility that a rudimentary computational model, consistent with data from neuroscience experiments about learning and synaptic plasticity, can emerge as a useful framework for understanding brain computation.</p>
<p>Seating is limited, <a href="http://kailathlecture.stanford.edu/" target="_blank">thank you for registering.</a></p>
2016-11-04 23:00:00 to 2016-11-05 00:30:00Christos Papdimitriou (University of California, Berkeley)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2309IT-Forumhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/it-forum-31
<p>In many applications such as networked control systems, sensor and surveillance networks, and transportation networks, etc., data must be transmitted sequentially from one node to another under a strict delay deadline. In many of such real-time communication systems, the transmitter is a battery powered device that transmits over a wireless packet-switched network; the cost of switching on the radio and transmitting a packet is significantly more important than the size of the data packet. Therefore, the transmitter does not transmit all the time; but when it does transmit, the transmitted packet is as big as needed to communicate the current source realization. In this talk, we characterize fundamental trade-offs between the estimation error (or distortion) and the cost or average number of transmissions in such systems.</p>
<p>In particular, we consider a sensor that observes a first-order autoregressive Markov process. At each time instant, based on the current state of the process and the history of its past decisions, the sensor determines whether or not to transmit the current state. Transmissions take place over a packet erasure channel. If the sensor does not transmit, the receiver must estimate the state using the previously transmitted values. A per-step distortion function measures the estimation error. We investigate two fundamental trade-offs in this setup: (i) when there is a cost associated with each communication, what is the minimum expected estimation error plus communication cost; and (ii) when there is a constraint on the average number of transmissions, what is the minimum estimation error. For both these cases, we characterize the transmission and estimation strategies that achieve the optimal trade-off and develop algorithms that identify these optimal strategies.</p>
<p>This is a joint work with Jhelum Chakravorty and Jayakumar Subramanian.</p>
2016-11-04 20:15:00 to 2016-11-04 21:15:00Aditya Mahajan (McGill University)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2336Fuse! Study nighthttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/fuse-study-night-21
<p>Autumn quarter '16 study nights are every Thursday at 8:30pm in the Fuse room (Packard 318).</p>
<p>Snacks will be provided to fuel good work. We hope to see you there!</p>
<p> </p>
<p><em><strong>-Fuse</strong></em></p>
2016-11-04 03:30:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2294US-ATMC (EE402) Seminarhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/us-atmc-ee402-seminar-2
<p>The <strong>US-Asia Technology Management Center</strong> seminars are open to the public at no charge. Stanford students may register through Axess in course EE-402A for 1 unit seminar credit.</p>
2016-11-03 23:30:00Panel Discussionhttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/2234SystemX Seminarhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/systemx-seminar-45
<p>Wireless technologies are steadily approaching Shannon limits. Network densification (reuse), unlocking swathes of new spectrum, and spatial multiplexing gains via multiple antennas are key to delivering higher network capacity. Enabling these concepts to coherently work together - while also achieving practical, lower cost networks - is itself a key challenge. Dr Barratt will share perspectives on technologies that enable more efficient use of spectrum and greater network capacity to support the future growth of the wireless Internet.</p>
2016-11-03 23:30:00 to 2016-11-04 00:30:00Dr. Craig Barratt (Google Access)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2323ISL Colloquiumhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/isl-colloquium-17
<p>How much private information is "leaked" by revealing certain data? This question arises in several applications including side-channels, including wire-tap channels, and database privacy. Many metrics have been proposed to quantify leakage in such contexts. Most of these metrics, however, either lack a cogent operational justification or label obviously-insecure systems as secure.</p>
<p>We propose a new metric called "maximal leakage," defined as the multiplicative increase, upon observing the public data, of the probability of correctly guessing a randomized function of the private information, maximized over all such randomized functions. We provide an operational justification for this definition and show how it can be computed in practice. Among other findings, we show that mutual information<br />underestimates leakage while local differential privacy overestimates it.</p>
<p>This is joint work with Ibrahim Issa and Sudeep Kamath.</p>
2016-11-03 23:15:00 to 2016-11-04 00:15:00Aaron Wagner (Cornell University)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2333SmartGrid Seminarhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/smartgrid-seminar-21
<p>We present two recent results. In the first result, we use a continuous linearized power flow model for distribution networks and derive the optimal sizing of distributed energy storage devices to minimize power loss and prove several monotonicity properties of the optimal solution when all loads have the same shape. We show through simulations that these structural properties hold approximately in standard discrete nonlinear power flow models, even when loads have different shapes. In the second result, we describe a recent method for computing power flow solutions using monotone operators. The basic idea is to embed an operationally relevant space in a domain of voltages over which the power flow operator is monotone. Such domains are non unique and we show that at most one power flow solution exists in each of these domains. Efficient algorithms, based on solving an associated monotone variational inequality, can compute power flow solutions in the monotonicity domain or certify that none exists in the monotonicity domain. (Joint work with Yujie Tang (Caltech), Krishnamurthy Dvijotham (PNNL), Michael Chertkov (ANL))</p>
<hr /><p><strong>About the SmartGrid Seminar:</strong> </p>
<p>Our speakers will discuss exciting new ideas and technologies that are changing the electricity industry. The theme of the seminar series is on smart grids and energy systems, with speakers from academic institutions and industry. The hour-long seminars, including ample time for discussion, are held at 1:30 pm every Thursday. Open to all Stanford students, faculty and staff.</p>
2016-11-03 20:30:00 to 2016-11-03 21:30:00Steven Low (California Institute of Technology)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2319CS Department Lecture Series (CS300)https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/cs-department-lecture-series-cs300-26
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<p>Offered to incoming first-year PhD students in the Autumn quarter.</p>
<p>The seminar gives CS faculty the opportunity to speak about their research, which allows new CS PhD students the chance to learn about the professors and their research before permanently aligning.</p>
<p><strong>4:30-5:15, <span>Omer Reingold</span></strong></p>
<p><strong>5:15-6:00, <span>Oussama Khatib</span></strong></p>
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2016-11-02 23:30:00 to 2016-11-03 01:00:00Omer Reingold and Oussama Khatibhttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/2262EE380 Computer Systems Colloquiumhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/ee380-computer-systems-colloquium-40
<p>Distributed systems are notoriously difficult to get right. We're constantly improving the frameworks we use and the way we test production code, yet we rarely invest in tools for system design. The best design tools we have are still low-tech, like whiteboards and back-of-the-envelope calculations. Runway is a new tool to help design distributed and concurrent systems. It combines specification, simulation, visualization, and model checking into one tool, so you can write a single system model and do a bunch of useful things with it: the same model can help you evaluate a design's correctness, availability, and performance while also helping others learn how the design works.</p>
2016-11-02 23:30:00 to 2016-11-03 00:30:00Diego Ongaro (Salesforce)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2335Special Seminarhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/special-seminar-7
<p>This talk considers the optimal adaptive allocation of measurement effort for identifying the best among a finite set of options or designs. An experimenter sequentially chooses designs to measure and observes noisy signals of their quality with the goal of confidently identifying the best design after a small number of measurements. Just as the multi-armed bandit problem crystallizes the tradeoff between exploration and exploitation, this "pure exploration" variant crystallizes the challenge of rapidly gathering information before committing to a final decision.</p>
<p>I will propose three simple Bayesian algorithms for allocating measurement effort, and by characterizing fundamental asymptotic limits on the performance of any algorithm, formalize a sense in which these seemingly naive algorithms are the best possible. I will also present numerical experiments exhibiting performance surpassing competing approaches.</p>
2016-11-02 23:00:00 to 2016-11-03 00:00:00Dan Russo (Northwestern)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2308SCIEN Talkhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/scien-talk-3
<p>This talk will review architectures for computational imaging arrays where algorithms and cameras are co-designed. The talk will focus on novel digital readout integrated circuits (DROICs) that achieve snapshot on-chip high dynamic range and object tracking where most commercial systems require a multiple exposure acquisition.</p>
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<p>The Stanford Center for Image Systems Engineering (SCIEN) is a partnership between the Stanford School of Engineering and technology companies developing imaging systems for the enhancement of human communication.</p>
2016-11-01 23:30:00 to 2016-11-02 00:30:00Christy Fernandez Cull (MIT Media Lab)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2274Applied Physics/Physics Colloquiumhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/applied-physicsphysics-colloquium-32
<p>The Cosmic Axion Spin-Precision experiment and the Global Network of Optical Magnetometers for Exotic physics searches will be discussed.</p>
<hr /><p>Held Tuesdays at 4:30 pm in the William R. Hewlett Teaching Center, room 200. Refreshments in the lobby of Varian Physics at 4:15 pm.</p>
<p>Autumn 2016/2017, Committee: R. Blandford (Chair), A, Kapitulnik, R. Laughlin, L. Senatore</p>
2016-11-01 23:30:00 to 2016-11-02 00:30:00Dmitry Budker (Helmholtz Institute Mainz)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2288SystemX Seminarhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/systemx-seminar-44
<p>At the nanoscale, carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have higher carrier mobility and carrier velocity than most incumbent semiconductors (including silicon). Thus CNT based field-effect transistors (FETs) are being considered as strong candidates for replacing CMOS in future digital circuits. The predicted high intrinsic transit frequency has also inspired investigations on analog high-frequency (HF) applications. More recently, it has been realized that CNTFETs may also possess a highly linear transfer characteristic, which is extremely valuable for a more energy efficient usage of the frequency spectrum, particularly in mobile communications. The relaxed technology contraints compared to digital applications, make an entry in the low GHz HF market more probable and feasible than large-scale digital circuit. For medical applications and wearable electronics CNT-based thinfilm transistors have a huge potential due to intrinsically stretchability and high apparent mobility compared to other materials.</p>
<p>This talk presents the state-of-the-art of HF CNTFET technology from an engineering point of view and discusses the incredients needed for enabling CNTFET-based HF applications. The status of the employed multi-scale simulation tools covering physical effects in detail at the atomistic level up to compact models for CNTFET circuit design and simulation will be discussed, along with practical examples for their application, such as the exploration of process and material options for optimizing the transistor toward high device linearity. Furthermore, selected examples for experimental results for important DC and HF characteristics of fabricated devices will be shown. These results also demonstrate the accuracy of a newly developed CNTFET compact model for the design of analog HF circuits. The presentation will conclude with an outlook on the compact modeling of CNT-based thinfilm transistors and related circuit design.</p>
2016-11-01 23:30:00 to 2016-11-02 00:30:00 Dr.-Ing. Martin Claus (Cfaed, Technische Universität)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2322CS Department Lecture Series (CS300)https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/cs-department-lecture-series-cs300-25
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<p>Offered to incoming first-year PhD students in the Autumn quarter.</p>
<p>The seminar gives CS faculty the opportunity to speak about their research, which allows new CS PhD students the chance to learn about the professors and their research before permanently aligning.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>4:30-5:15, <span>Peter Bailis</span></strong></p>
<p><strong>5:15-6:00, <span>Stefano Ermon</span></strong></p>
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</div>
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2016-10-31 23:30:00 to 2016-11-01 01:00:00 Peter Bailis and Stefano Ermonhttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/2261Special Seminarhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/special-seminar-8
<p>Scaling of volatile SRAM and DRAM memories is hitting limits on read and write power, area and endurance/reliability characteristics. For that reason, several researchers have started to study alternatives based on embedded and stand-alone non-volatile memory (NVM) options. The currently emerging PCM, STT-MRAMs and ReRAMS are promising in terms of reducing leakage and area, and indirectly also the dynamic read power. But they are not simultaneously meeting all the desirable figures-of-merit, such as the write and read access speed, or the endurance/reliability issues. Hence also other emerging memory options are being explored which have the promise to improve on read/write latency and endurance, while allowing trade-offs on other axis. These include faster magnetic STT-MRAMs, domain wall RAMS and better scalable ferro-electric resistive devices.</p>
<p>A need exists to compare these options in a systematic way though, which is as much as possible future-proof, including the link to the system design and hence to the overall processing platform. In this talk a systematic approach will be advocated to characterize these options in a multi-dimensional Pareto exploration space, and a few interesting directions will be positioned in this space to highlight the potential of this approach.</p>
2016-10-31 23:30:00 to 2016-11-01 00:30:00Dr. Francky Caththoor (IMEC, Belgium)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2334IT-Forumhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/it-forum-30
<p>Smart meters report electricity usage of a user to the utility provider on a real-time basis, which is known to leak sensitive user information. In this talk we will discuss how a rechargeable battery with limited storage capacity at the user's home can be used to mask this information.</p>
<p>We will use the mutual information between the user load and the grid output as our privacy metric and assume that the rechargeable battery satisfies ideal charge conservation. We show that the problem of designing optimal charging policies is equivalent to designing a communication channel subject to certain state constraints. For the case of i.i.d. inputs we derive an explicit solution and provide an intuitive interpretation based on certain invariance properties of the system. For the case of Markov inputs we cast the problem as a Markov Decision Process (MDP) that could be solved using a dynamic program. We will also discuss a generalization when multiple batteries cascaded in series can be used by the system.</p>
<p>This is a joint work with Simon Li and Aditya Mahajan.</p>
<hr /><p>The Information Theory Forum (IT-Forum) at Stanford ISL is an interdisciplinary academic forum which focuses on mathematical aspects of information processing. With a primary emphasis on information theory, we also welcome researchers from signal processing, learning and statistical inference, control and optimization to deliver talks at our forum. We also warmly welcome industrial affiliates in the above fields. The forum is typically held in Packard 202 every Friday at 1:00 pm during the academic year.</p>
<p>The Information Theory Forum is organized by graduate students Jiantao Jiao and Yanjun Han. To suggest speakers, please contact any of the students.</p>
2016-10-28 20:15:00 to 2016-10-28 21:15:00Ashish Khisti (University of Toronto)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2241EE Pumpkin Carving Contesthttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/department/ee-pumpkin-carving-contest-0
<p>Come together with your EE friends/labmates/coworkers to craft the best pumpkin! </p>
<p>Our annual event brings together the EE community in a friendly forum to carve the best Halloween Pumpkin.</p>
2016-10-28 19:30:00 to 2016-10-28 20:30:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2292Fuse! Study nighthttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/fuse-study-night-21
<p>Autumn quarter '16 study nights are every Thursday at 8:30pm in the Fuse room (Packard 318).</p>
<p>Snacks will be provided to fuel good work. We hope to see you there!</p>
<p> </p>
<p><em><strong>-Fuse</strong></em></p>
2016-10-28 03:30:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2294EE402A Colloquiumhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/ee402a-colloquium
<p>The US-Asia Technology Management Center seminars are open to the public at no charge. Stanford students may register through Axess in course EE402A for 1 unit seminar credit.</p>
<p> </p>
2016-10-27 23:30:00 to 2016-10-28 00:30:00Dan Svejnar (United Wind) and Hirokazu Yamaguchi (TEPCO)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2312SystemX Seminarhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/systemx-seminar-43
<p>Design thinking, the human-centered design methodology developed over the last 50 years at Stanford, has been traditionally applied to wicked problems in the product, service, and experience design space. As such, designers are typically working with technologies readily available that have systems for mature manufacturing at-scale. This talk examines the question - "Can design thinking be applied to basic research where the core technologies are still under development and basic material science is still in flux?". And, if so, what is the role of the designer on a basic science research team, and what are the advantages and disadvantages of this approach. We will present a case study using our experience with the Samsung research project in stretchable electronics (Elastronics). The projects goal is to complete basic research into stretchable semiconductor materials, stretchable batteries and and other electronic components potentially leading to advanced configurations of on-skin body area networks (BodyNET) that, going beyond the paradigm of measurement, significant enhanced human capabilities.</p>
2016-10-27 23:30:00 to 2016-10-28 00:30:00Bill Burnet (Stanford)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2321ISL Colloquiumhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/isl-colloquium-15
<p>We are witnessing a profusion of networked robotic platforms with distinct features and unique capabilities. To exploit the diversity of such robotic networks, we are contriving ecosystems of tightly interconnected and interdependent heterogeneous entities. However, as connections are established, information is shared, and dependencies are created, these systems give rise to new vulnerabilities and threats. I begin my talk by addressing the question of how heterogeneity affects the privacy of dynamic robot networks. With the ultimate goal of securing disruption-free operation, I introduce a model of differential privacy aimed at concealing critical robotic entities. Yet, even if we are able to protect individual robot roles, the hardware platforms may still be compromised. In light of this threat, my focus then shifts to the question of how to provide resilience in the face of non-cooperative and malicious agents. I show how precautionary connectivity management allows the robot networks to function, even in the presence of compromised individuals. Finally, I illustrate the effectiveness of this strategy on applications of vehicle flocking and perimeter surveillance.</p>
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<p>The Information Systems Laboratory Colloquium (ISLC) is typically held in Packard 101 every Thursday at 4:15 pm during the academic year. Refreshments are usually served after the talk.</p>
<p>The Colloquium is organized by graduate students Martin Zhang, Huseyin Inan, Reza Takapoui, and Zhengyuan Zhou. To suggest speakers, please contact any of the students.</p>
2016-10-27 23:15:00 to 2016-10-28 00:15:00Amanda Prorok (University of Pennsylvania)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2242SmartGrid Seminarhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/smartgrid-seminar-20
<p>The electric grid is seeing unprecedented change. New mandates for higher levels of renewable generation, distributed energy resources, cyber security, etc. are introducing increasing levels of complexity for grid planning and engineering. These changes are exceeding capabilities of today's modeling and analysis tools by utilities, ISOs, regulators, and vendors to support critical decisions for investment, engineering, and policy development. This 'technology gap' in tools represents an exciting opportunity for research in advanced computing and modeling methods. New approaches in high performance computing, numerical methods, computer science, and data analytics will greatly enhance grid stakeholders ability to predict and optimize evolutions of the electric grid. In this talk, the speaker will discuss new research in planning and design tools in DOE, gaps in tools technologies, and the role of advanced computing in developing next generation planning and design tools.</p>
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<p><strong>About the SmartGrid Seminar:</strong> <br />Our speakers will discuss exciting new ideas and technologies that are changing the electricity industry. The theme of the seminar series is on smart grids and energy systems, with speakers from academic institutions and industry. The hour-long seminars, including ample time for discussion, are held at 1:30 pm every Thursday. Open to all Stanford students, faculty and staff.</p>
2016-10-27 20:30:00 to 2016-10-27 21:30:00John Grosh (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2318EE380 Computer Systems Colloquiumhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/ee380-computer-systems-colloquium-38
<p>"Computers are unreliable and vulnerable to attacks. Therefore, we shouldn't believe what they say, unless they prove its correctness." Imagine how much more robust our systems and networks would be, if they could be built on this tenet! But how can we succinctly prove that some complex computation was not corrupted, and actually produced the correct output? Can this be done efficiently? And how would such proofs be used and propagated in a larger system?</p>
<p>In recent years, there has been dramatic progress in the theory and implementation of cryptographic proof systems with the requisite properties: zero-knowledge Noninteractive ARguments of Knowledge (zkSNARK) and its extension to Proof-Carrying Data.</p>
<p>We will survey this progress, and discuss several applications:</p>
<ul><li>Ensuring the integrity of any logic circuit, or any C programs </li>
<li>Zerocash: Preserving users' privacy in Bitcoin-like cryptocurrencies </li>
<li>ProtoProof: Verifying the authenticity of edited photographs</li>
</ul><p>Includes joint work with Eli Ben-Sasson, Alessandro Chiesa, Christina Garman, Daniel Genkin, Matthew Green, Ian Miers, Assa Naveh, Gilad Roth and Madars Virza.</p>
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<p><strong>The Stanford EE Computer Systems Colloquium (EE380)</strong> meets on Wednesdays 4:30-5:45 throughout the academic year. Talks are given before a live audience in Room B03 in the basement of the Gates Computer Science Building on the Stanford Campus. The live talks (and the videos hosted at Stanford and on YouTube) are open to the public.</p>
2016-10-26 23:30:00Eran Tromer (Tel Aviv University)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2230CS Department Lecture Series (CS300)https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/cs-department-lecture-series-cs300-24
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<p>Offered to incoming first-year PhD students in the Autumn quarter.</p>
<p>The seminar gives CS faculty the opportunity to speak about their research, which allows new CS PhD students the chance to learn about the professors and their research before permanently aligning.</p>
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<p><strong>4:30-5:15, <span>Mark Horowitz</span></strong></p>
<p><strong>5:15-6:00, <span>Dawson Engler</span></strong></p>
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2016-10-26 23:30:00 to 2016-10-27 01:00:00Mark Horowitz and Dawson Englerhttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/2260Applied Physics/Physics Colloquiumhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/applied-physicsphysics-colloquium-31
<p>Majorana fermion is a hypothetical fermionic particle which is its own anti-particle. Intense research efforts focus on its experimental observation as a fundamental particle in high energy physics and as a quasi-particle in condensed matter systems. I shall report the theoretical prediction and the experimental discovery of the chiral Majorana fermion in a topological state of quantum matter. In the hybrid system of a quantum anomalous Hall thin film coupled with a conventional superconductor, a series of topological phase transitions are controlled by the reversal of the magnetization, where the half-integer quantized conductance plateau (0.5e2/h) is observed as a compelling signature of the Majorana fermion.</p>
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<p>Held Tuesdays at 4:30 pm in the William R. Hewlett Teaching Center, room 200. Refreshments in the lobby of Varian Physics at 4:15 pm.</p>
<p>Autumn 2016/2017, Committee: R. Blandford (Chair), A, Kapitulnik, R. Laughlin, L. Senatore</p>
2016-10-25 23:30:00 to 2016-10-26 00:30:00Shoucheng Zhang (Stanford)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2287Stanford Energy Weekhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/stanford-energy-week
<h1>Stanford Energy Club presents Stanford Energy Week</h1>
<p>Keynote from philanthropist and political donor Tom Steyer.<br />Get your tickets and learn more about <strong><a href="http://www.stanfordenergyweek.com" target="_blank">Energy Week</a></strong></p>
<p> </p>
<ul><li>Events: <a href="https://goo.gl/QWYoFl" target="_blank">https://goo.gl/QWYoFl</a></li>
<li>Speakers: <a href="https://goo.gl/ze0vlJ" target="_blank">https://goo.gl/ze0vlJ</a></li>
<li>Location: <a href="https://goo.gl/x1p0y4" target="_blank">https://goo.gl/x1p0y4</a></li>
<li>RSVP: <a href="https://goo.gl/PZlVGV" target="_blank">https://goo.gl/PZlVGV</a></li>
</ul><p><strong>Questions?</strong> Email Energy Club events VPs Rohith (rohithdesikan@gmail.com) and Anmol (anmol9@stanford.edu)</p>
2016-10-25 07:00:00 to 2016-10-29 07:00:00Various Speakershttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/2310CS Department Lecture Series (CS300)https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/cs-department-lecture-series-cs300-23
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<p>Offered to incoming first-year PhD students in the Autumn quarter.</p>
<p>The seminar gives CS faculty the opportunity to speak about their research, which allows new CS PhD students the chance to learn about the professors and their research before permanently aligning.</p>
<p><strong>4:30-5:15, <span>Anshul Kundaje</span></strong></p>
<p><strong>5:15-6:00, <span>Michael Bernstein</span></strong></p>
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2016-10-24 23:30:00 to 2016-10-25 01:00:00Anshul Kundaje and Michael Bernsteinhttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/2259Special Seminarhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/special-seminar-6
<p>The memory system presents many problems in computer architecture. A fundamental issue is worsening hardware variability and environmental sensitivity due to manufacturing difficulties in the nanometer nodes. As a consequence, memories often limit the resiliency and energy-efficiency of computing platforms from the embedded to the cloud and supercomputers. To help address these challenges, I propose the design of opportunistic memory systems that exploit and cope with hardware variation to improve both resiliency and energy efficiency.</p>
<p>The majority of my talk will focus on the concept of Software-Defined Error-Correcting Codes, a new methodology which co-designs ECC hardware with system software. This makes it possible to heuristically recover up to roughly 90% of the time from detected-but-uncorrectable errors (DUEs) in memory. This is achieved without any overheads in hardware parity storage, decoding latency, nor decoding energy in the common cases when DUEs do not occur. The software-based recovery policy leverages knowledge about the hardware ECC implementation and a small amount of side information about applications' instructions and data. Using typical codes such as SECDED and ChipKill, Software-Defined ECC could prevent many system crashes and energy/time-intensive checkpoint rollbacks that would otherwise result from memory DUEs. This technique might be especially useful to improve the resiliency of supercomputers and safety-critical real-time embedded systems by increasing the mean-time-to-failure.</p>
2016-10-24 23:30:00 to 2016-10-25 00:30:00Mark Gottscho (EE PhD Candidate, UCLA)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2305IT-Forumhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/it-forum-29
<p>What is the minimal mean squared error in recovering a path of the Brownian motion from any finite bit per time lag encoded version of it? Is it possible to attain a bounded mean squared error in this case?</p>
<p>Berger's PhD thesis answers these two question by providing a coding theorem for the Brownian motion, showing that its optimal distortion-rate performance are described by Shannon's distortion-rate function. That is, Berger's result implies that for any positive bitrate, there exists a coding scheme that allows recovering of the Brownian path with mean squared error given by Shannon's distortion-rate function (first evaluated by Iaglom).</p>
<p>Berger's result, however, does not take into account practical considerations in encoding analog process. Indeed, hardware and other implementation constraints restrict access to samples of the continuous-time path, taken at a finite time resolution. The question that we ask in thistalk is what is the minimal mean squared error in recovering the original Brownian path from a code that is only a function of these samples. This question is answered by deriving the distortion-rate function as a function of the sampling rate. It can be shown that the ratio between this function and the optimal distortion-rate performance without sampling constraint of Berger, are only a function of the number of bits per sample. For example, our result implies that using 1 bits per sample, one can attain distortion which is no more than 1.12 times the distortion-rate function.</p>
<p>Another interesting question arises in the following case: assume that the source encoder receives the discrete-time samples but is unaware of their underlying continuous-time origin. As a result, the encoder applies an optimal source code with respect to the empirical distribution of these samples, namely with respect to a discrete-time Brownian motion. We show that the maximal loss in this case, compared to an encoder that considers the continuous-time origin, does not exceed 1/6 times the intensity of the process.</p>
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<p>The Information Theory Forum (IT-Forum) at Stanford ISL is an interdisciplinary academic forum which focuses on mathematical aspects of information processing. With a primary emphasis on information theory, we also welcome researchers from signal processing, learning and statistical inference, control and optimization to deliver talks at our forum. We also warmly welcome industrial affiliates in the above fields. The forum is typically held in Packard 202 every Friday at 1:00 pm during the academic year.</p>
<p>The Information Theory Forum is organized by graduate students Jiantao Jiao and Yanjun Han. To suggest speakers, please contact any of the students.</p>
2016-10-21 20:00:00 to 2016-10-21 21:15:00Alon Kipnis (Stanford)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2238Fuse! Study nighthttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/fuse-study-night-21
<p>Autumn quarter '16 study nights are every Thursday at 8:30pm in the Fuse room (Packard 318).</p>
<p>Snacks will be provided to fuel good work. We hope to see you there!</p>
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<p><em><strong>-Fuse</strong></em></p>
2016-10-21 03:30:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2294US-ATMC (EE402) Seminarhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/us-atmc-ee402-seminar-1
<p><strong>Autumn 2016 theme: New Approaches to Energy and Environment Challenges: Recent Developments in Asia</strong></p>
<p><a href="http://asia.stanford.edu/?page_id=7167" target="_blank">Please see our event page for more information</a>.</p>
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<p>The <strong>US-Asia Technology Management Center</strong> seminars are open to the public at no charge. Stanford students may register through Axess in course EE-402A for 1 unit seminar credit.</p>
2016-10-20 23:30:00 to 2016-10-21 00:50:00Dr. Sridhar Jagannathan (NEXT Future Transportation, Inc.)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2233SystemX Seminarhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/systemx-seminar-41
<p>Several groups are investigating silicon devices to be implanted near the retina for patients with age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and retinitis pigmentosa (RP), in which the photoreceptors degrade while other parts of the retina remain mostly functioning. One class of these devices, subretinal photodiode arrays, aims to replace the degraded photoreceptors and couple to the functioning portions of the eye. Most implementations rely on a power source external to the eye, requiring complex surgical procedures and creating paths for serious infections. In our approach the device operates in the photovoltaic mode, so that the external light provides both the signal and the power source. Each pixel in the two-dimensional array independently converts pulsed infrared light into electrical current that stimulates the retinal neurons. </p>
<p>After a brief discussion of the overall system, this talk will emphasize the design, fabrication, and optoelectronic performance of the photodiode array. To enhance charge injection each pixel contains multiple photodiodes connected in series to provide a photovoltage sufficient to stimulate the neurons, but which is limited by the ionization threshold of the fluid in the eye. An active and a return electrode in each pixel provide localized current flow to improve spatial resolution. </p>
2016-10-20 23:30:00 to 2016-10-21 00:30:00Dr. Ted Kamins (Stanford)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2251ISL Colloquiumhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/isl-colloquium-16
<p>Three dimensional cryo-electron microscopy (3D cryo-EM, for short) is the problem of determining the three dimensional structure of a large molecule from the set of images, taken by an electron microscope, of randomly oriented and positioned identical molecular particles which are frozen in a thin layer of ice. A solution to this problem is of particular interest, since it promises to be an entirely general technique which does not require crystallization or other special preparation stages. Present approaches to the problem fail with particles that are too small, cryo-EM images that are too noisy or at resolutions where the signal-to-noise ratio becomes too small.</p>
<p>The focus of my talk is the intrinsic reconstitution algorithm, due to Singer and Shkolnisky, which constitutes a basic step for the solution of the 3D cryo-EM problem and whose main appealing property is its remarkable numerical stability to noise. My goal is to give an introductory explanation of the mathematical principles underlying this novel algorithmic approach, while hinting about how they apply to other fundamental problems in cryo-EM and beyond. Along the way, I will describe the mathematical model underlying the experimental set-up, specifying the main computational problems/technical difficulties that should be resolved as part of three dimensional structure determination from cryo-EM images.</p>
<p>Finally, to put things in a broader mathematical perspective, I will briefly mention the general picture: explaining how other fundamental algorithmic problems of Cryo-EM (and beyond) can be formulated and effectively solved in similar mathematical framework.</p>
2016-10-20 23:15:00 to 2016-10-21 00:15:00Ronny Hadani (UTexas at Austin)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2301Special Seminarhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/special-seminar-5
<p>Glaucoma is a leading cause of irreversible blindness with 60 million cases worldwide. An elevated intraocular pressure (IOP) level has been identified as a major risk factor, and all the glaucoma therapies are aimed at lowering the IOP level. Moreover, in a recent large- scale NIH-sponsored study, researchers have found that IOP of an individual patient fluctuates largely over the course of the day, and continuous monitoring and aggressively lowering IOP in a timely manner is very crucial for optimal disease management. My research group has been developing a nanophotonics-enhanced implantable pressure sensor with remote optical readout. The sensor is compact for easy implantation, and its operation requires only a broadband light source, such as a tungsten light bulb. Bench testing has demonstrated that the sensor tracks pressures ranging from 0-40 mmHg within ±1 mmHg, and we have been successfully monitoring in vivo IOPs of live rabbits for almost two years now. This presentation will describe our IOP sensor development and progress, and I hope to leave you convinced that our approach of combining MEMS technologies with nanophotonics will eventually allow us to solve the long-standing challenge in glaucoma research and management.</p>
2016-10-20 20:30:00 to 2016-10-20 21:30:00Prof. Hyuck Choo (California Institute of Technology)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2297Things I Wish I Knew* as a Grad/Post-Doc/First-Year Assistant Professor https://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/things-i-wish-i-knew-gradpost-docfirst-year-assistant-professor
<p><a href="http://profiles.stanford.edu/eric-pop" target="_blank"><strong>Professor Eric Pop</strong></a> will share about his journey through the late years of grad school, postdoc, and early academia, including an honest discussion of mistakes, missteps and misconceptions (many that he has personally had to overcome). He received his PhD in EE from Stanford (2005) and three degrees from MIT (MEng and BS in EE, BS in Physics). He did a post-doc at Stanford, worked at Intel, was Assistant then Associate Professor at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and joined the EE faculty at Stanford in 2013. His honors include the 2010 PECASE from the White House (the highest honor given by the US government to early-career scientists and engineers), and Young Investigator Awards from the ONR, AFOSR, DARPA, and NSF-CAREER. He is a former DJ at KZSU 90.1 FM, and more info about his present activities can be found at <a href="http://poplab.stanford.edu" target="_blank">http://poplab.stanford.edu</a>.</p>
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<p class="p1"><em><span class="s1">* about academic jobs.</span></em></p>
<h3>Pizza provided - please be sure to <a href="https://stanford.joinhandshake.com/events/27384/share_preview" target="_blank"><strong>RSVP</strong></a> – or send an email to <a href="https://ee.stanford.edu/mailto%3Alchoy%40stanford.edu" target="_blank">lchoy@stanford.edu</a>.</h3>
2016-10-20 18:30:00 to 2016-10-20 20:30:00Eric Pop (Stanford)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2302LAB64 Grand Openinghttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/department/lab64-grand-opening
<h3>Do you like to make things? Are you interested in getting started with electronics? Is there a project that you've been meaning to work on?</h3>
<h3>Undergrads! Please join us for the Grand Opening of Lab64, Stanford's newest makerspace!</h3>
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<p>Please let us know if you're coming by <strong><a href="https://goo.gl/forms/HSeEfuY132Bu0ZWH3" target="_blank">RSVPing</a></strong>.</p>
2016-10-20 01:00:00 to 2016-10-20 04:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2295EE380 Computer Systems Colloquiumhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/ee380-computer-systems-colloquium-37
<p>Absolute security is science fantasy, and perfection is the enemy of good. Good engineers realize the wisdom of that statement, and strive to develop tools, abstractions, and mechanisms that provide desired properties (like resiliency) with known certainty. But providing such properties at a specified level is easier said than done, especially for properties that are probabilistic and systems that are complex distributed combinations of hardware and software.</p>
<p>This talk explores attempts to provide cyber resiliency in systems that are used in critical applications. It argues that CAD tools are needed at design time to choose between alternative resiliency mechanisms, and that resiliency mechanisms are needed that provide redundancy, diversity, and adaptive behavior. It also argues that runtime sensing mechanisms need to correlate information from diverse sensors to expose attackers. Finally, it argues that by focusing on adaptation mechanisms that operate on effects rather than attacks, a system can tolerate many zero-day attacks. Taken together, we describe our work towards a pragmatic, but not perfect, approach to engineer resiliency into cyber systems for use in critical applications.</p>
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<p><strong>The Stanford EE Computer Systems Colloquium (EE380)</strong> meets on Wednesdays 4:30-5:45 throughout the academic year. Talks are given before a live audience in Room B03 in the basement of the Gates Computer Science Building on the Stanford Campus. The live talks (and the videos hosted at Stanford and on YouTube) are open to the public.</p>
2016-10-19 23:30:00William H. Sanders (University of Illinois)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2229CS Department Lecture Series (CS300)https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/cs-department-lecture-series-cs300-22
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<p>Offered to incoming first-year PhD students in the Autumn quarter.</p>
<p>The seminar gives CS faculty the opportunity to speak about their research, which allows new CS PhD students the chance to learn about the professors and their research before permanently aligning.</p>
<p><strong>4:30-5:15, <span>Gill Bejerano</span></strong></p>
<p><strong>5:15-6:00, <span>Greg Valiant</span></strong></p>
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2016-10-19 23:30:00 to 2016-10-20 01:00:00Gill Bejerano and Greg Valianthttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/2258SCIEN Talkhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/scien-talk-2
<p>Active illumination techniques enable self-driving cars to detect and avoid hazards, optical microscopes to see deep into volumetric specimens, and light stages to digitally capture the shape and appearance of subjects. These active techniques work by using controllable lights to emit structured illumination patterns into an environment, and sensors to detect and process the light reflected back in response. Although such techniques confer many unique imaging capabilities, they often require long acquisition and processing times, rely on predictive models for the way light interacts with a scene, and cease to function when exposed to bright ambient sunlight.</p>
<p>In this talk, we introduce a generalized form of active illumination—known as optical probing—that provides a user with unprecedented control over which light paths contribute to a photo. The key idea is to project a sequence of illumination patterns onto a scene, while simultaneously using a second sequence of mask patterns to physically block the light received at select sensor pixels. This all-optical technique enables RAW photos to be captured in which specific light paths are blocked, attenuated, or enhanced. We demonstrate experimental probing prototypes with the ability to (1) record live direct-only or indirect-only video streams of a scene, (2) capture the 3D shape of objects in the presence of complex transport properties and strong ambient illumination, and (3) overcome the multi-path interference problem associated with time-of-flight sensors.</p>
2016-10-18 23:30:00 to 2016-10-19 00:30:00Dr. Matthew O&#039;Toole (Stanford University)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2273Applied Physics/Physics Colloquiumhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/applied-physicsphysics-colloquium-30
<p>When we think about particle physics, the first thing that comes to mind is colliders and high energies. Recently there have been several proposals of low-energy precision experiments that can also look for new particles, new forces, and the Dark Matter of the Universe in a way that is complementary to collider searches. In this talk, I propose two different experiments that search for a type of Dark Matter naturally arising in String Theory. In String Theory, fundamental constants, such as the electron mass or charge, are determined by fields known as moduli. When these fields are the Dark Matter of our Universe, they cause the fundamental constants to oscillate with a frequency set by the Dark Matter mass. For frequencies smaller than 1 Hz, atomic clocks with their unprecedented sensitivity can pick up these oscillations. For higher frequencies above 1 kHz, Dark Matter can excite acoustic modes in resonant mass detectors originally designed to detect gravitational radiation from astrophysical sources. Both techniques extend searches for this type of Dark Matter by several orders of magnitude in the near future.</p>
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<p> Held Tuesdays at 4:30 pm in the William R. Hewlett Teaching Center, room 200. Refreshments in the lobby of Varian Physics at 4:15 pm.</p>
<p>Autumn 2016/2017, Committee: R. Blandford (Chair), A, Kapitulnik, R. Laughlin, L. Senatore</p>
2016-10-18 23:30:00 to 2016-10-19 00:30:00Asimina Arvanitaki (Perimeter Institute)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2286CS Department Lecture Series (CS300)https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/cs-department-lecture-series-cs300-21
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<p>Offered to incoming first-year PhD students in the Autumn quarter.</p>
<p>The seminar gives CS faculty the opportunity to speak about their research, which allows new CS PhD students the chance to learn about the professors and their research before permanently aligning.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>4:30-5:15, <span>Keith Winstein</span></strong></p>
<p><strong>5:15-6:00, <span>Chris Ré</span></strong></p>
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2016-10-17 23:30:00 to 2016-10-18 01:00:00Keith Winstein and Chris Réhttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/2257SystemX Seminarhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/systemx-seminar-42
<p>The Precision Medicine Initiative challenges biomedical researchers to reframe health optimization and disease treatment in a patient-specific, personalized manner. Rather than a one-size-fits-all paradigm, the charge is for a particular profile to be fit to each patient, and for disease treatment (or wellness) strategies to then be tailored accordingly. Non-invasive physiological sensing and modulation can play an important role in this effort by augmenting existing research in ‑omics and medical imaging towards better developing such personalized models for patients, and in continuously adjusting such models to optimize therapies in real-time to meet patients' changing needs. While in many instances the focus of such efforts is on disease treatment, optimizing performance for healthy individuals is also a compelling need. This talk will focus on my group's research on non-invasive sensing of the sounds and vibrations of the body, with application to musculoskeletal and cardiovascular monitoring applications. In the first half of the talk, I will discuss our studies that are elucidating mechanisms behind the sounds of the knees, and particularly the characteristics of such sounds that change with acute injuries. We use miniature microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) air-based and piezoelectric contact microphones to capture joint sounds emitted during movement, then apply data analytics techniques to both visualize and quantify differences between healthy and injured knees. In the second half of the talk, I will describe our work studying the vibrations of the body in response to the heartbeat using modified weighing scales and wearable MEMS accelerometers. Our group has extensively studied the timings of such vibrations in relation to the electrophysiology of the heart, and how such timings change for patients with cardiovascular diseases during treatment. Ultimately, we envision that these technologies can enable personalized titration of care and optimization of performance to reduce injuries and rehabilitation time for athletes and soldiers, improve the quality of life for patients with heart disease, and reduce overall healthcare costs.</p>
2016-10-17 21:00:00 to 2016-10-17 22:00:00Omer T. Inan (Georgia Institute of Technology)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2296Fuse! Study nighthttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/fuse-study-night-21
<p>Autumn quarter '16 study nights are every Thursday at 8:30pm in the Fuse room (Packard 318).</p>
<p>Snacks will be provided to fuel good work. We hope to see you there!</p>
<p> </p>
<p><em><strong>-Fuse</strong></em></p>
2016-10-14 03:30:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2294US-ATMC (EE402) Seminarhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/us-atmc-ee402-seminar-0
<p><strong>Autumn 2016 theme: New Approaches to Energy and Environment Challenges: Recent Developments in Asia</strong></p>
<p><strong>Panelists:</strong><br />- Bess Ho, Founder &amp; Chairman, Silicon Valley Web Builder, and Founding Partner, Archimedes Lab<br />- Sean Luangrath, CEO, Inergy Solar<br />- Dr. Henry Yau, CEO, DeLight Power Products Limited</p>
<p> <a href="http://asia.stanford.edu/?page_id=7184" target="_blank">More information</a>.</p>
<hr /><p> The <strong>US-Asia Technology Management Center</strong> seminars are open to the public at no charge. Stanford students may register through Axess in course EE-402A for 1 unit seminar credit.</p>
2016-10-13 23:30:00Panel of Speakershttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/2232SystemX Seminarhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/systemx-seminar-40
<p><span>Fully Depleted Silicon on Insulator (FD-SOI) is one of the alternatives that permits today to follow the Moore's law of CMOS integration for the 28nm node and beyond, while still dealing with fully planar transistors. Numerous presentations have presented over the several last years the benefits of this technology for an energy efficient integration of digital signal processing cores. This talk will focus on the benefits of FD-SOI technology for analog/RF/millimeter-wave and high-speed mixed signal circuits, by taking full advantage of wide voltage range body biasing tuning. For each category of circuits (analog/RF, mmW and high-speed), concrete design examples are given in order to highlight the main design features specific to FD-SOI.</span></p>
2016-10-13 23:30:00 to 2016-10-14 00:30:00Dr. Andreia Cathelin (STMicroelectronics)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2250SmartGrid Seminarhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/smartgrid-seminar-19
<p>Kisensum is a software company that is dedicated to developing solutions for electric vehicle charging, stationary energy storage systems, and microgrids. Kisensum's microgrid controller software is flexible and adaptable to the needs of grid tied or islanded systems. It controls energy storage, EVs, PV, and inverters for demand charge management, resiliency, and PV over generation capture. The architecture is reliable and resilient, using open protocols and standards to easily incorporate all of the components of a microgrid. Build upon DOD cyber security standards, all applications integrate new batteries, 2nd life batteries, electric vehicles, PV, and building data into common processing model. The experience of developing and rolling out OpenADR internationally and developing the software for the first V2G fleet participating in the CAISO F/R market gives Kisensum a unique understanding of wholesale and utility energy markets.</p>
2016-10-13 20:30:00 to 2016-10-13 21:30:00Bob Barcklay (Kisensum)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/22932016 Stanford Neurosciences Institute Symposiumhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/general/2016-stanford-neurosciences-institute-symposium
<p><a href="http://sni2016symposium.brownpapertickets.com/" target="_blank">Register</a></p>
<p><a href="https://neuroscience.stanford.edu/2016-neurosciences-institute-symposium-program" target="_blank">View Program</a></p>
<p><strong>SPEAKERS</strong><br />Helen Bronte-Stewart, Stanford University<br />Connie Cepko, Harvard University<br />Tom Dean, Google Brain<br />Keith Humphreys, Stanford University<br />Mark Schnitzer, Stanford University<br />Tony Wyss-Coray, Stanford University</p>
<p><strong>TOPICS</strong><br />NeuroHealth<br />Molecular &amp; Cellular Neuroscience<br />Machine Learning &amp; Artificial Intelligence<br />Neuroscience &amp; Policy<br />Neural Coding<br />Brain Rejuvenation</p>
2016-10-13 07:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2207EE380 Computer Systems Colloquiumhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/ee380-computer-systems-colloquium-36
<p>Both AI and cognitive science can gain by studying the human solutions to difficult computational problems [1]. My talk will focus on two problems: concept learning and question asking. Compared to the best algorithms, people can learn new concepts from fewer examples, and then use their concepts in richer ways -- for imagination, extrapolation, and explanation, not just classification. Moreover, learning is often an active process; people can ask rich and probing questions in order to reduce uncertainty, while standard active learning algorithms ask simple and stereotyped queries. I will discuss my work on program induction as a cognitive model and potential solution for extracting richer concepts from less data, with applications to learning handwritten characters [2] and learning recursive visual concepts from examples. I will also discuss program synthesis as a model of question asking in simple games [3].</p>
<p>[1] Lake, B. M., Ullman, T. D., Tenenbaum, J. B., and Gershman, S. J. (2016). Building machines that learn and think like people. Preprint available on arXiv:1604.00289.<br />[2] Lake, B. M., Salakhutdinov, R., and Tenenbaum, J. B. (2015). Human-level concept learning through probabilistic program induction. Science, 350(6266), 1332-1338.<br />[3] Rothe, A., Lake, B. M., and Gureckis, T. M. (2016). Asking and evaluating natural language questions. In Proceedings of the 38th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.</p>
<hr /><p> </p>
<p><strong>The Stanford EE Computer Systems Colloquium (EE380)</strong> meets on Wednesdays 4:30-5:45 throughout the academic year. Talks are given before a live audience in Room B03 in the basement of the Gates Computer Science Building on the Stanford Campus. The live talks (and the videos hosted at Stanford and on YouTube) are open to the public.</p>
2016-10-12 23:30:00Brenden Lake (NYU)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2228CS Department Lecture Series (CS300)https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/cs-department-lecture-series-cs300-20
<div class="field field-name-field-event-abstract-description field-type-text-with-summary field-label-above">
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<div class="field-item even">
<p>Offered to incoming first-year PhD students in the Autumn quarter.</p>
<p>The seminar gives CS faculty the opportunity to speak about their research, which allows new CS PhD students the chance to learn about the professors and their research before permanently aligning.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>4:30-5:15, <span>Percy Liang</span></strong></p>
<p><strong>5:15-6:00, <span>Andrew Ng</span></strong></p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
2016-10-12 23:30:00 to 2016-10-13 01:00:00Percy Liang and Andrew Nghttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/2256SCIEN Talkhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/scien-talk-1
<p>Around a year ago we set out to create an open-source reference design for a 3D-360 camera. In nine months, we had designed and built the camera, and published the specs and code. Our team leveraged a series of maturing technologies in this effort. Advances and availability in sensor technology, 20+ of computer vision algorithm development, 3D printing, rapid design photo-typing and computation photography allowed our team to move extremely fast. We will delve into the roles each of these technologies played in the designing of the camera, giving an overview of the system components and discussing the tradeoffs made during the design process. The engineering complexities and technical elements of 360 stereoscopic video capture will be discussed as well. We will end with some demos of the system and its output.</p>
2016-10-12 23:30:00 to 2016-10-13 00:30:00Brian Cabral (Facebook)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2272Applied Physics/Physics Colloquiumhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/applied-physicsphysics-colloquium-29
<p>The Anti-de Sitter/Conformal Field Theory correspondence has given us a precise description of quantum gravity in asymptotically Anti-de Sitter space, as a quantum field theory (without gravity) with one fewer spacetime dimension. This proposal has passed many tests, but the emergence of the extra dimension on the gravitational side remains rather mysterious.</p>
<p>Daniel will present recent work explaining how this emergence can be naturally understood as a manifestation of quantum error correction, an idea originally introduced to solve the seemingly unrelated problem of protecting a quantum computer from decoherence. We will see that this gives precise meaning to speculations over the past decade relating boundary entanglement to the emergence of bulk geometry; to emphasize this precision I will illustrate the proposal using an exactly soluble model of the correspondence constructed via tensor networks.</p>
2016-10-11 23:30:00 to 2016-10-12 00:30:00Daniel Harlow (Harvard University)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2285CS Department Lecture Series (CS300)https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/cs-department-lecture-series-cs300-19
<p>Offered to incoming first-year PhD students in the Autumn quarter.</p>
<p>The seminar gives CS faculty the opportunity to speak about their research, which allows new CS PhD students the chance to learn about the professors and their research before permanently aligning.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>4:30-5:15, Alex Aiken</strong></p>
<p><strong>5:15-6:00, Pat Hanrahan</strong></p>
2016-10-10 23:30:00 to 2016-10-11 01:00:00Alex Aiken and Pat Hanrahanhttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/2255IT-Forumhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/it-forum-28
<p>Erasure codes are being increasingly deployed as an alternative to data replication in large-scale distributed storage systems to achieve fault tolerance in a storage-efficient manner. This paradigm shift has opened up exciting challenges and opportunities both on the theoretical as well as the system-design fronts. Specifically, while traditional codes are optimal in utilizing storage space, they significantly increase the usage of other important cluster resources such as network and device I/O. Furthermore, the usage of codes has primarily been limited to achieving space-efficient fault tolerance for storing "cold'' (less-frequently accessed) data, beyond which the potential of codes in big-data systems is largely unexplored.</p>
<p>We present new code constructions, and design and build erasure-coded storage systems, which provably reduce the usage of network and device I/O by a significant amount while not compromising on storage efficiency. Our codes have been evaluated on Facebook's data warehouse cluster in production, and will be a part of the next release of Apache Hadoop. Furthermore, we explore new avenues for coding in big-data systems, in particular for "hot'' (frequently accessed) data, by showing how codes can be employed to achieve significant benefits in load balancing and reducing latency in data-intensive cluster caches.</p>
<hr /><p> </p>
<p>The Information Theory Forum (IT-Forum) at Stanford ISL is an interdisciplinary academic forum which focuses on mathematical aspects of information processing. With a primary emphasis on information theory, we also welcome researchers from signal processing, learning and statistical inference, control and optimization to deliver talks at our forum. We also warmly welcome industrial affiliates in the above fields. The forum is typically held in Packard 202 every Friday at 1:00 pm during the academic year.</p>
<p>The Information Theory Forum is organized by graduate students Jiantao Jiao and Yanjun Han. To suggest speakers, please contact any of the students.</p>
2016-10-07 20:15:00 to 2016-10-07 21:15:00Rashmi K. Vinayak (Berkeley)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2237US-ATMC (EE402) Seminarhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/us-atmc-ee402-seminar
<p>The <strong>US-Asia Technology Management Center</strong> seminars are open to the public at no charge. Stanford students may register through Axess in course EE-402A for 1 unit seminar credit.</p>
2016-10-06 23:30:00 to 2016-10-07 00:50:00Panel Discussionhttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/2231SystemX Seminarhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/systemx-seminar-39
<p><span>The triumph of LIGO’s confirmation, at this 100th anniversary of Einstein’s prophetic work, both of gravitational wave propagation and their full GR source dynamics is astounding enough to recount. An exciting new field has been launched, and grown in either its experimental or astrophysical scope beyond the compass of one talk. Only briefly, I will first present an overview of the LIGO instruments with insight into their roots in the classic “interferometer of Michelson” (findings so inspirational to Einstein) over 130 years and &gt; 1010 in metric resolution ago. Next, the amazing nature of the binary black hole coalescence events detected will be spotlighted. Rather than due to particular conspicuous technical innovations, I emphasize that human scientific vision sustained this quest from the time of Weber and realization that BHs and GWs should be palpable. Certainly the culmination in LIGO’s discovery 60 years later is essentially due to the perseverance and faith of remarkable visionaries carrying on through much adversity and periods of doubt. Turning from the drama, I’ll take a personal, insider view of a selection of fascinating technical challenges faced in LIGO. The message will be that focused, meticulous engineering carried out by dedicated and ingenious scientists will carry the day. Seemingly unglamorous details such as thorough understanding of materials thermal and mechanical characteristics; vacuum technology; and ultra-low noise servo-mechanical strategies take center stage!</span></p>
2016-10-06 23:30:00 to 2016-10-07 00:30:00William Kells (Caltech)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2249SmartGrid Seminarhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/smartgrid-seminar-18
<p>Infrastructure systems, broadly defined to include buildings and other facilities, transportation infrastructure, telecommunication networks, the power grid and environmental systems will require more and more that engineers provide a continuous state awareness, assessment and proactive decision making for the complete life-cycle of the systems and processes they create. Such continuous state awareness and proactive decision making will allow these systems to be more efficiently and effectively managed in both normal and abnormal conditions. Advanced Infrastructure Systems is defined here to refer to innovative systems, components, devices and processes that improve the performance and/or reduce the life-cycle cost of a broad range of physical infrastructure systems. There are many technological developments and research projects that already support, or begin to support this vision. Civil Engineers, not just electrical and computer engineers and computer scientists, can and should be involved in delivering this overall vision. At this talk professor Soibelman will introduce his vision and work developed within his research group that focus on the application and exploration of emerging Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), to a broadly defined set of infrastructure systems and associated processes, such as planning, design, construction, facility/infrastructure management, and environmental monitoring, so as to improve their sustainability, efficiency, maintainability, durability, and the overall performance of these systems.</p>
2016-10-06 20:30:00 to 2016-10-06 21:30:00 Prof. Lucio Soibelman (University of Southern California)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2281Fuse Hosts Student TI Workshophttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/fuse-hosts-student-ti-workshop
<p>Get the ease of Arduino style programming with the low power and performance Texas Instruments LaunchPad evaluation kit. In this beginner, fun, hands-on workshop, students will enjoy using easy to follow Energia software examples. You'll go from lighting LED's to moving motors while we will build several breadboard projects with a variety of sensors, discrete and analog components from SEEED Studio's SideKick Kit. Great preparation for capstone design, class or club projects.</p>
<p><strong>Bring your laptop and RSVP here: <a href="http://tinyurl.com/FuseTI" target="_blank">http://tinyurl.com/FuseTI</a></strong></p>
<p>Pizza provided and drawings for LaunchPads, BoosterPacks and prizes!</p>
<hr /><p><strong>Fuse is EE's undergraduate student group.</strong><br />The mission of Fuse is to improve student life and foster community amongst the undergraduates in the electrical engineering department. By serving as a platform for social activities and events, Fuse aims to establish a network that students can leverage to succeed academically, as well as encourage work-life balance and facilitate communication between undergraduates and the EE faculty and staff.</p>
2016-10-06 02:00:00 to 2016-10-06 04:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2282EE380 Computer Systems Colloquiumhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/ee380-computer-systems-colloquium-35
<p>Just this year, deep learning has fueled significant progress in computer vision, speech recognition, and natural language processing. We have seen a computer beat the world champion in Go with help from deep learning, and a single deep learning algorithm learn to recognize two vastly different languages, English and Mandarin. At Baidu, we think that this is just the beginning, and high performance computing is poised to help.</p>
<p>It turns out that deep learning is compute limited, even on the fastest machines in the world. This talk will provide empirical evidence from our Deep Speech work that application level performance (e.g. recognition accuracy) scales with data and compute, transforming some hard AI problems into problems of computational scale.</p>
<p>It will describe the performance characteristics of Baidu's deep learning workloads in detail, focusing on the recurrent neural networks used in Deep Speech as a case study. It will cover challenges to further improving performance, describe techniques that have allowed us to sustain 250 TFLOP/s when training a single model on a cluster of 128 GPUs, and discuss straightforward improvements that are likely to deliver even better performance.</p>
<p>Our three big hammers are improving algorithmic efficiency, building faster and more power efficient processors, and strong scaling training to larger clusters. The talk will conclude with open problems in these areas, and suggest directions for future work.</p>
<hr /><p> </p>
<p><strong>The Stanford EE Computer Systems Colloquium (EE380)</strong><span> meets on Wednesdays 4:30-5:45 throughout the academic year. Talks are given before a live audience in Room B03 in the basement of the Gates Computer Science Building on the Stanford Campus. The live talks (and the videos hosted at Stanford and on YouTube) are open to the public.</span></p>
2016-10-05 23:30:00Greg Diamos (Baidu)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2227CS Department Lecture Series (CS300)https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/cs-department-lecture-series-cs300-18
<p>Offered to incoming first-year PhD students in the Autumn quarter.</p>
<p>The seminar gives CS faculty the opportunity to speak about their research, which allows new CS PhD students the chance to learn about the professors and their research before permanently aligning.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>4:30-5:15, Clark Barrett</strong></p>
<p><strong>5:15-6:00, Maneesh Agrawala</strong></p>
2016-10-05 23:30:00 to 2016-10-06 01:00:00Clark Barrett and Maneesh Agrawalahttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/2254SCIEN Talkhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/scien-talk-0
<p>The ultimate wearable display is an information device that people can use all day. It should be as forgettable as a pair of glasses or a watch, but more useful than a smart phone. It should be small, light, low-power, high-resolution and have a large field of view (FOV). Oh, and one more thing, it should be able to switch from VR to AR.</p>
<p>These requirements pose challenges for hardware and, most importantly, optical design. In this talk, I will review existing AR and VR optical architectures and explain why it is difficult to create a small, light and high-resolution display that has a wide FOV. Because comfort is king, new optical designs for the next-generation AR and VR system should be guided by an understanding of the capabilities and limitations of the human visual system.</p>
2016-10-05 23:30:00 to 2016-10-06 00:30:00Bernard Kress (Microsoft Research)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2271Applied Physics/Physics Colloquiumhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/applied-physicsphysics-colloquium-28
<p>An exciting emerging area revolves around the use of microfluidic tools for single-cell genomic analysis. We have been using microfluidic devices for both gene expression analysis and for genome sequencing from single cells. In the case of gene expression analysis, it has become routine to analyze hundreds of genes per cell on hundreds to thousands of single cells per experiment. This has led to many new insights into the heterogeneity of cell populations in human tissues, especially in the areas of cancer and stem cell biology. These devices make it possible to perform "reverse tissue engineering" by dissecting complex tissues into their component cell populations, and they are also used to analyze rare cells such as circulating tumor cells or minor populations within a tissue.</p>
<p>We have also used single-cell genome sequencing to analyze the genetic properties of microbes that cannot be grown in culture - the largest component of biological diversity on the planet—as well as to study the recombination potential of humans by characterizing the diversity of novel genomes found in the sperm of an individual. We expect that single cell genome sequencing will become a valuable tool in understanding genetic diversity in many different contexts.</p>
2016-10-04 23:30:00 to 2016-10-05 00:30:00Stephen Quake (Stanford)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2280CS Department Lecture Series (CS300)https://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/cs-department-lecture-series-cs300-17
<p><span>Offered to incoming first-year PhD students in the Autumn quarter. </span></p>
<p><span>The seminar gives CS faculty the opportunity to speak about their research, which allows new CS PhD students the chance to learn about the professors and their research before permanently aligning.</span></p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>4:30-5:15, Mary Wootters</strong></p>
<p><strong>5:15-6:00, Tim Roughgarden</strong></p>
2016-10-03 23:30:00 to 2016-10-04 01:00:00Mary Wootters and Tim Roughgardenhttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/2253GSEE HappEE Hourhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/gsee-happee-hour-3
<p>EE Grad Students! Join us for the first HappEE Hour of the academic year. We'll have freshly cooked tacos and an assortment of beverages.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><em>Please bring proof of age (21+) if you plan on drinking alcohol.</em></p>
<p> </p>
<p>Hope to see you there!</p>
2016-10-01 00:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2246Special Seminarhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/special-seminar-4
<p>Bandwidth matters. Deep learning algorithms dominate Artificial Intelligence (AI) area but existing platforms to run them are not efficient enough. The inefficiency largely comes from the inefficient memory system design: we need to load too many data from the external memory but bandwidth is insufficient.</p>
<p>To deploy neural networks onto customized hardware and achieve high energy efficiency, we propose a complete flow consists of Deep Compression, compilation, and hardware acceleration. Deep Compression can reduce the size of neural networks and also the bandwidth requirement by 35× to 49× without affecting their accuracy. Two fully parameterized accelerators including Aristotle architecture for CNN and Descartes architecture for sparse DNN/RNN are proposed to save memory access and take advantage of sparsity. A compiler is designed to convert neural network models to instructions in tens of seconds.</p>
<p>Evaluated on two practical CNN algorithms for object detection and face landmark detection, Aristotle accelerator on low-end embedded FPGA achieves 1.20x and 3.93x performance than Tegra K1 GPU while achieving 75% energy reduction. Based on medium FPGA, Descartes accelerator achieves 5x performance and 15x energy efficiency than Maxwell Titan X GPU with LSTM for speech recognition.</p>
2016-09-30 23:30:00 to 2016-10-01 00:30:00Song Yao (Co-Founder and CEO of Deephi Technology Co., Ltd)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2245SystemX Seminarhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/systemx-seminar-37
<p><span>Dr Khare is pleased to offer his perspective on what lies ahead for the semiconductor devices and systems roadmap, from scaling and advanced pattering, to novel logic devices, toward new computing devices and architectures for cognitive systems.</span></p>
2016-09-30 22:00:00 to 2016-09-30 23:00:00Dr. Mukesh V. Khare (IBM Research)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2247IT-Forumhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/it-forum-27
<p> </p>
<p>In the first part, we propose a new encoding scheme for the wiretap channel setting where a random state is known non-causally to the encoder but not necessarily to the decoder (the Gelfand-Pinsker setting). This setting combines two scenarios with celebrated results in information theory--the wiretap channel and the Gelfand-Pinsker channel--and it so happens that essentially the same encoding scheme is optimal for both scenarios individually. A decade ago, Chen and Han Vinck analyzed the secrecy rates achieved by that same encoding scheme. Quite surprisingly, Chia and El Gamal more recently showed that a different encoding scheme which explicitly extracts a key from the state to be used for encryption can sometimes outperform that scheme. In this work, we show a simple superposition code design which performs at least as well as both of these competing schemes, accomplishing the key agreement concept in a more subtle way through the selection of the auxiliary random variables.</p>
<p>In the second part, an information theoretic notion of differential privacy will be presented, which establishes an equivalence between differential privacy and a mutual information constraint. This intuitive definition in terms of mutual information admits very simple proofs of several important properties of differential privacy.</p>
<hr /><p> </p>
<p>The Information Theory Forum (IT-Forum) at Stanford ISL is an interdisciplinary academic forum which focuses on mathematical aspects of information processing. With a primary emphasis on information theory, we also welcome researchers from signal processing, learning and statistical inference, control and optimization to deliver talks at our forum. We also warmly welcome industrial affiliates in the above fields. The forum is typically held in Packard 202 every Friday at 1:00 pm during the academic year.</p>
<p>The Information Theory Forum is organized by graduate students Jiantao Jiao and Yanjun Han. To suggest speakers, please contact any of the students.</p>
2016-09-30 20:15:00 to 2016-09-30 21:15:00Paul Cuff (Princeton)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2236SystemX Seminarhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/systemx-seminar-38
<p><span>From Colossus and Eniac to the present world of iPhone and Nest, machine computation has reached from military use, to scientific pursuits, to commercial applications, to office automation, to home use/entertainment, all the way to a continued presence in our daily lives. This evolution has been propelled by technology advances in semiconductors, but also by advances in mechanical assembly, in communications methods, in sensing capabilities, as well as development practices and the supporting business models. This talk will trace the arc of these developments, and do so in the spirit of introducing the focus areas of SystemX. The conclusion of the talk, with its summary of challenges ahead, shapes the organization of the seminar series to follow.</span></p>
2016-09-29 23:30:00 to 2016-09-30 00:30:00Rick Bahr (Stanford SystemX Alliance)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2248Stanford Optical Society Seminar: Laser-assisted processing of nano-materials for production of large area flexible electronicshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/stanford-optical-society-seminar-laser-assisted-processing-nano-materials-production-0
<p>This talk will introduce a new set of computational microscopes which use lens-free on-chip imaging to replace traditional lenses with holographic reconstruction algorithms. Basically, 3D images of specimens are reconstructed from their "shadows" providing considerably improved field-of-view (FOV) and depth-of-field, thus enabling large sample volumes to be rapidly imaged, even at nanoscale. These new computational microscopes routinely generate &gt;1–2 billion pixels, where even single viruses can be detected with a FOV that is &gt;100 fold wider than other techniques. At the heart of this leapfrog performance lie self-assembled liquid nano-lenses that are computationally imaged on a chip.</p>
<p>Another major benefit of this technology is that it lends itself to field-portable and cost-effective designs which easily integrate with smartphones to conduct giga-pixel tele-pathology and microscopy even in resource-poor and remote settings where traditional techniques are difficult to implement and sustain, thus opening the door to various telemedicine applications in global health.</p>
<hr /><p><em>This seminar is sponsored by Stanford OSA</em></p>
2016-09-29 23:00:00 to 2016-09-30 00:00:00Aydogan Ozcan, Ph.D. (UCLA)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2244EE380 Computer Systems Colloquiumhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/ee380-computer-systems-colloquium-34
<p>Current packet backbone networks are based on telephone, railroad, or highway networks. They were designed to minimize the total link length. Packet switched networks are different from circuit switched networks in that they should be designed to minimize the number of hops instead of the total link length. Minimizing the number of hops reduces the latency, power consumption, and cost. This also increases network efficiency by completely eliminating the â€œbypassâ€ packets that needless pass through the routers.</p>
<p>In more detail, the number of hops can be reduced by 2X by converting the network into a toroid. The number of hops can be further reduced by recasting the network into N-dimensional hypercube or into a multistage network, such as a Perfect Shuffle or Banyan. The multistage networks can be made redundant by adding an extra stage. This increases the fault tolerance and reduces the fabric blocking of the network. The reduced fabric blocking increases the network's ability to carry voice and video. Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) channels on existing optical fiber links can be connected together to implement these topologies. The DWDM channels decouple the network topology from the geographical constraints. These topologies are compatible with all the layers of the OSI stack.</p>
<p>---</p>
<p><strong>The Stanford EE Computer Systems Colloquium (EE380)</strong> meets on Wednesdays 4:30-5:45 throughout the academic year. Talks are given before a live audience in Room B03 in the basement of the Gates Computer Science Building on the Stanford Campus. The live talks (and the videos hosted at Stanford and on YouTube) are open to the public.</p>
2016-09-28 23:30:00Alan Huang, Ph.d. and Scott Knauer. Ph.d.https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2226Statistics Seminarhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/statistics-seminar-5
<p>The Airy line ensemble is a positive-integer indexed ordered system of continuous random curves on the real line whose finite dimensional distributions are given by the multi-line Airy process. It is a natural object in the KPZ universality class: for example, its highest curve, the Airy2 process, describes after the subtraction of a parabola the limiting law of the scaled weight of a geodesic running from the origin to a variable point on an anti-diagonal line in such problems as Poissonian last passage percolation. The Airy line ensemble enjoys a simple and explicit spatial Markov property, the Brownian Gibbs property.</p>
<p>In this talk, I will discuss how this resampling property may be used to analyse the Airy line ensemble. Arising results include a close comparison between the ensemble's curves after affine shift and Brownian bridge. The Brownian Gibbs technique is also used to compute the value of a natural exponent describing the decay in probability for the existence of several near geodesics with common endpoints in Brownian last passage percolation, where the notion of "near" refers to a small deficit in scaled geodesic weight, with the parameter specifying this nearness tending to zero.</p>
2016-09-26 23:30:00Alan Hammond (UC Berkeley)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2240New EE Grad Student Orientationhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/new-ee-grad-student-orientation
<p><strong>Welcome to the Stanford EE Department!</strong></p>
<p>The annual graduate student orientation event covers important information about EE-specific academic requirements and provides opportunities to network with fellow EE students, faculty and staff. </p>
<p>Orientation activities include research-area breakout sessions, student/faculty lunches, an overview of academic requirements, a scavenger hunt and many more fun events!</p>
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<p><strong>We are excited to welcome you to Stanford and ready to help you prepare for a fulfilling experience!</strong></p>
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2016-09-22 15:00:00 to 2016-09-23 20:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2177SPRC 2016 Symposiumhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/sprc-2016-symposium
<p>The 2016 Stanford Photonics Research Center (SPRC) Symposium will be September 19-20, 2016 in the new McMurtry building.</p>
2016-09-19 16:00:00 to 2016-09-21 00:30:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2180Deadline: 2017 Stanford Neurosciences Institute Interdisciplinary Scholar Awardshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/deadline-2017-stanford-neurosciences-institute-interdisciplinary-scholar-awards
<p>Scholars must have a faculty sponsor (required) and may recruit a co-sponsor from a different field (optional). Alternatively, scholars may focus their postdoctoral training in a field or discipline different from their graduate training.</p>
<p>Scholarships will be awarded annually. The selected scholars will be provided funding for two years. The funding is to be utilized for payments toward tuition, salary, and health benefits. In addition the scholars meet for quarterly luncheons, visit each others labs to learn about different areas of study and research techniques, develop skills to communicate with a non-scientific audience, and present "elevator pitches" of their research aims and accomplishments to the Executive Committee.</p>
<p>Candidates in a variety of disciplines will be considered: basic and clinical neurosciences, biomedical sciences, physical sciences, social sciences, engineers and experts in human behavior from the fields of education, law, business, and humanities.</p>
<p>Women and under-represented minority postdocs are encouraged to apply.</p>
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<p>Applications are due on <strong>September 1, 2016</strong> and the awardees will be announced in <strong>December 2016.</strong></p>
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<p>For more information, please visit the <strong><a href="https://neuroscience.stanford.edu/initiatives/interdisciplinary-scholar-awards" target="_blank">Neurosciences Institute</a></strong></p>
2016-09-02 00:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2155REU Presentation Dayhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/department/reu-presentation-day
<p>Please join us for the <strong>Electrical Engineering REU Final Presentation Day</strong>.</p>
<p>The oral session will begin at 12noon in AllenX Auditorium; the poster session will begin at 2:30pm in Packard Atrium.</p>
<p><strong>View the <a href="https://ee.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/2016REUPresentationDayPosterTitles.pdf" target="_blank">2016 REU Poster Titles</a><br />Research areas include:</strong></p>
<ul><li>Circuits and Physical Systems,</li>
<li>Materials and Devices, and</li>
<li>Signals and Information Systems</li>
</ul><p><em>Thank you for supporting the EE REU Program!</em></p>
<p>Read more about <strong><a href="https://ee.stanford.edu/academics/reu">Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU)</a></strong></p>
<h4><img src="https://ee.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/REU-orientationGroup.jpg" alt="" /></h4>
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2016-08-25 19:00:00 to 2016-08-25 23:45:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2197OSA Seminarhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/osa-seminar-6
<p>Of the various approaches to quantum computing, photons are appealing for their low-noise properties and ease of manipulation at the single photon level; while the challenge of entangling interactions between photons can be met via measurement induced non-linearities. However, the real excitement with this architecture is the promise of ultimate manufacturability: All of the components---including sources, detectors, filters, switches, and delay lines---have been implemented on chip, and increasingly sophisticated integration of these components is being achieved. We will discuss the opportunities and challenges of a fully integrated photonic quantum computer.</p>
2016-08-11 23:15:00 to 2016-08-12 00:00:00Dr. Jeremy O&#039;Brien https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2194Special Seminarhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/special-seminar-3
<p><strong>Special Seminar</strong></p>
<p>"Exploiting Statistical Nature of Machine Learning and Deep Learning for Future Cognitive Systems," Presenter: Dr. Ruchir Puri, IBM Fellow</p>
2016-08-10 21:00:00 to 2016-08-10 22:00:00Dr. Ruchir Puri (IBM Fellow )https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2191SmartGrid Seminarhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/smartgrid-seminar-17
<p>The electric power grid is a spatially and temporally complex, non-convex, non-linear, and non-stationary system with uncertainties at many levels. The integration of renewable sources of energy such as wind and solar farms, energy storage, and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles will add further complexity and challenges to efficient operation of future grids. Multi-agent systems based on distributed intelligence offer a particularly attractive approach for operation and energy management in a smart grid. In this seminar, I will discuss some of our projects where multi-agent systems have been employed for operation optimization, decision making and control of a smart grid.</p>
2016-08-01 17:00:00 to 2016-08-01 18:00:00Dipti Srinivasan (National University of Singapore)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2188OSA Seminarhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/osa-seminar-5
<p>Tuberculosis afflicts one third of the population worldwide; more effective therapeutics are urgently needed. However, the slow growth rate of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the causative agent of tuberculosis, hinders advancement in all areas of TB research. Fluorescent proteins have been widely utilized in real-time imaging of tuberculosis to track disease progression and evaluate therapeutic outcomes in live animals, but the sensitivity of this technique is limited by tissue absorption of fluorescence excitation light, which limits penetration particularly in the visible wavelengths. To circumvent the impact of tissue absorption of excitation light, we have applied a fiber bundle microendoscope to deliver fluorescence excitation light directly into the mouse lung. We have integrated this microendoscope into a whole animal imaging system to enable intravital excitation in the mouse lung combined with whole animal detection. Using the integrated intravital-excitation whole-animal imaging system, we have improved the detection threshold of tdTomato expressing M. bovis BCG strain during pulmonary infection to ~103 colony forming units (CFU). This detection threshold represents a ~3-fold improvement compared to epi-illumination in a whole animal imaging system, which normally detects ~106 CFU within the lungs of a mouse.</p>
2016-07-28 20:00:00 to 2016-07-28 21:00:00Prof. Kristen Maitland (Texas A&amp;M University)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2186Japan - U.S. Innovation Awards Symposiumhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/general/japan-us-innovation-awards-symposium
<p>The Japan - U.S. Innovation Awards Program, produced by the Japan Society of Northern California in cooperation with the US-Asia Technology Management Center, has announced that Ms. Ari Horie, Founder &amp; CEO of Women's Startup Lab, an acclaimed accelerator that promotes innovation through start-up company success and "intrapreneur" development, will deliver the keynote speech for the Innovation Awards Symposium at Stanford on July 22.</p>
<p>Ms. Horie was named one of CNN's Top 10 visionary women of 2014 and was included in the 2015 Forty Over 40 list of women making an impact. A frequent speaker on gender diversity, including recent appearances at SXSW (2014, 2015), the New Economy Summit in Japan (2015), and Slush Asia (2016), Ms. Horie will talk on the topic of "Breathing New Life into Innovation" by including more diverse voices, skills, and collaboration in the innovation systems of Japan and Silicon Valley. Her vision will focus on the role of people and problem solving in the future of U.S. – Japan ties in innovation.</p>
<p>The Symposium will also include the following program highlights:</p>
<ul><li>Welcoming remarks by former US Ambassador to Japan and Founder and General Partner of Geodesic Capital John V. Roos.</li>
<li>Presentation of the Emerging Leader Awards to one U.S. and one Japanese company that are alreadybeginning to have a transformative effect on some market or industry.</li>
<li>A panel discussion with the CEOs of five exciting Japanese start-up companies in the Innovation Showcase: Axelspace Corporation (low cost micro-satellites), Floadia Corporation (embedded nonvolatile memory), Preferred Networks, Inc. (deep learning-based data analysis for IOT systems), Spiber, Inc. (mass production of spider silk using genetic engineering technology) and Xenoma, Inc. (fully customized wearable electronic apparel).</li>
</ul><p>Symposium attendees will have an invaluable opportunity to experience first-hand the exciting products offered by each Innovation Showcase company, as well as unmatched opportunities to network with thought-leaders who are active at the intersection of Japanese creativity and Silicon Valley entrepreneurship and innovation.</p>
<p>More details to be announced shortly including our 2016 Emerging Leader winners!</p>
2016-07-22 20:30:00 to 2016-07-23 01:30:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2172EE Special Seminarshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/ee-special-seminars
<h1>Hardware Neural Network from Synaptic Devices to Neuromorphic Computing</h1>
<p>Riding the wave of the powerful Moore's law, present von Neumann computing architectures and memory hierarchy have achieved great success in the past four decades. However, as transistor scaling approaching the end of roadmap and power consumption becoming the performance bottleneck in system design today, innovations in both device and system levels are in urgent need for realizing true human-level artificial intelligence. Many believe that neuromorphic computing on artifical neural network, similar to how our brains operate, is a promising direction to pursue. However, present artifical neural networks are implemented using software algorithms or complex Si-based CMOS circuits, and thus cannot overcome the limitations of low density and high energy consumption.</p>
<p>To achieve true human-level artificial intelligence, a low-power two-terminal electronic synapse—a fundamental component on hardware neural network that emulates the functions of a biological synapse—must be developed. Resistive-switching random access memory (RRAM) is now being actively developed as a low-power electronic synaptic device. It exhibits excellent scalability, compact 4F2 cell size, full CMOS compatibility, and ultralow pJ energy consumption per spike. The RRAM-base hardware neural network also inspired intriguing applications, such as pattern recognition and auditory processing. In this talk, we will discuss the new development of a RRAM-based synaptic device that shows promising potential for high-density 3D integration and low operating energy. The device is based on a non-filamentary swtiching mechanism that is significantly different from the conventional filamentary RRAM. We will also discuss the implementation of the RRAM-based hardware neural network for neuromorphic computing and the importance of device-neuromorphic algorithm codesign.</p>
<h1>End-to-End Hardware Accelerator for Deep Convolutional Neural Network</h1>
<p>Deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have achieved state-of-the-art accuracy on recognition, detection, and other computer vision fields. A CNN hardware will enable mobile devices to meet real time demands. However, the design of CNN hardware faces challenges of high computational complexity and data bandwidth as well as huge divergence for different CNN network layers. In which, the throughput of the convolutional layer would be bounded by hardware resource and throughput of the fully connected layer would be bounded by available data bandwidth. Thus, a highly flexible design with efficient hardware is desired to meet these needs.<br />This talk will present our end-to-end CNN accelerator with shared filter kernel for all layers and output view strategy for maximum data reuse. The whole CNN architecture is modelled with tile based design to optimize hardware resource and I/O data bandwidth for the desired CNN network under design constraints. The final design is generated based on desired resources and run time reconfigured by layer optimized parameters to achieve real time end-to-end CNN acceleration.</p>
2016-07-05 16:30:00 to 2016-07-05 18:30:00Tuo-Hung Hou and Tian Sheuan Chang (both from National Chiao Tung University)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2170Independence Day - No Classeshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/department/independence-day-no-classes
<p>Independence Day - No Classes</p>
2016-07-04 07:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2166REU Seminarhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/reu-seminar-0
<p>The<strong> REU Seminar Series</strong> is an educational and developmental opportunity for <strong>REU participants</strong>. Attendance at the seminars is required for all REU interns. Speakers will discuss their research or work, provide educational and career advice, and share their knowledge with you. There will be a questions and answer period at the end of each talk. Light refreshments are provided at each seminar. If you believe you may need accommodations during the seminar series, please contact us at reu@ee.stanford.edu so that we may find a way to accommodate your needs.</p>
<hr /><p>In many industries, engineering consultants are hired to solve challenging technical problems that cannot be solved in-house. But what exactly does this process involve, and how do these professionals find a solution to these problems? In this talk, Dr. Adam Sorini and Dr. Ed Fei will give an overview of the engineering consulting profession and Exponent Inc, the largest engineering consulting firm in the world. The talk will also cover interesting examples of real cases from the Electrical Engineering &amp; Computer Science group, and outline various approaches to researching and solving technical problems.</p>
2016-06-28 17:00:00 to 2016-06-28 18:00:00Adam Sorini and Ed Fei (Exponent, Inc.)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2173SystemX Seminarhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/systemx-seminar-36
<p>In this talk a 3D-integrated CMOS/Silicon-photonic receiver will be presented. This receiver is designed to effectively take advantage of low-cap silicon photonic photodiodes and advanced 3D-integration technologies. The electronic chip features an integrating receiver based on a low-bandwidth TIA that employs double-sampling and equalization through dynamic offset modulation. This architecture is also implemented in a 4-channel WDM-based parallel optical receiver using a forwarded clock at quarter-rate. Quadrature ILO-based clocking is employed for synchronization and a novel frequency-tracking method that exploits the dynamics of IL in a quadrature ring oscillator to increase the effective locking range.</p>
<p>When electronics and photonics are closely integrated they provide a great promise for improving interconnect performance and reduce cost. Holistic design of co-integrated optical interconnects provides a unique opportunity to design entirely new architectures and bring the performance of current systems to unprecedented levels. In this light, I will cover some future directions for my research beyond data communication such as sensors, computing and networking applications.</p>
2016-06-22 22:00:00Dr. Saman Saeedi (Oracle Labs)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2165REU Orientationhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/reu-orientation
<p>REU begins!</p>
2016-06-21 07:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2167First Day of Summer Quarterhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/first-day-summer-quarter
<p>Welcome! </p>
2016-06-20 07:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2158EE Commencement Ceremonyhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/department/ee-commencement-ceremony-0
<p>Congratulations and welcome 2016 graduates, family, faculty, and friends!</p>
<p>Graduates and their guests are welcome to attend both the Stanford University Commencement Ceremony and the EE Commencement Ceremony on Sunday, June 12, 2016.</p>
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<p>Details of the <strong><a href="https://ee.stanford.edu/academics/commencement">2016 EE Commencement Ceremony</a></strong> are available. Including program schedule, parking, seating, and disability accommodations.</p>
2016-06-12 19:00:00 to 2016-06-12 22:00:00Abbas El Gamal, EE Chair and Professorhttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/2120Special Seminar: Majority-based synthesis for Digital Nanotechnologieshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/special-seminar-majority-based-synthesis-digital-nanotechnologies
<p>Logic synthesis/optimization algorithms and tools have been used for over three decades. Still they suffer from various weaknesses, because they were conceived with CMOS AOI static gates in mind, with more primitive computers and storage systems, and without a strong formal basis. The design of large-scale, computation oriented, digital circuits is still a main challenge even with state of the art commercial tools. Because of the convergence of fabrication technologies, the competitive edge in CMOS design resides in its logic-level structuring achieved within synthesis. Moreover, novel nano technologies open new horizons by means of logic gates with enhanced functionality. Thus, more than ever, synthesis technology is a key to exploit technology in the search for the best design. This talk shows the motivation for searching better models and algorithms – as compared to the state of the art – for logic synthesis. A new Boolean algebra and model is shown to be effective for digital circuit optimization for speed, area and power consumption. Experimental results show that the new tool, MIGHTY, outperforms a commercial tool on the three metrics after complete physical design.</p>
2016-06-10 22:00:00 to 2016-06-10 23:00:00Professor Giovanni De Micheli (Institute of Electrical Engineering and the Integrated Systems Centre )https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2149OSA Seminarhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/osa-seminar-4
<p>This seminar reviews ongoing experimental and theoretical efforts to explore the plasmonic response in metallic nanoparticles, where nanometric dimensions are expected to promote a nonlocal plasmonic response beyond that of the usual classical electrodynamics. I will review efforts in semi-classical hydrodynamic extensions to classical electrodynamics [1,2], as well as our most recent developments beyond these simplified models [3,4]. I will also address recent single-particle electron energy-loss spectroscopy (EELS) observations of higher-order modes in silver nanoparticles [5]. Beyond the more fundamental aspects I will also discuss applications of nanoplasmonic systems, where localized plasmon resonances are used to facilitate a broad range of plasmonic colours with applications in decoration of plastic surfaces [6] and with novel opportunities for laser-post processing and printing of colours with subwavelength resolution [7].</p>
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<p>[1] N.A. Mortensen, S. Raza, M. Wubs, T. Søndergaard, and S.I. Bozhevolnyi, "A generalized non-local optical response theory for plasmonic nanostructures", Nature Communications 5, 3809 (2014)<br />[2] S. Raza, S.I. Bozhevolnyi, M. Wubs, and N.A. Mortensen, "Nonlocal optical response in metallic nanostructures", J. Phys. Cond. Matter. 27, 183204 (2015)<br />[3] G. Toscano, J. Straubel, A. Kwiatkowski, C. Rockstuhl, F. Evers, H. Xu, N. A. Mortensen, and M. Wubs, "Resonance shifts and spill-out effects in self-consistent hydrodynamic nanoplasmonics," Nature Communications 6, 7132, (2015)<br />[4] W. Yan, M. Wubs, and N. A. Mortensen, "Projected-dipole model for quantum plasmonics," "Projected Dipole Model for Quantum Plasmonics", Phys. Rev. Lett. 115, 137403 (2015)<br />[5] S. Raza, S. Kadkhodazadeh, T. Christensen, M. Di Vece, M. Wubs, N.A. Mortensen, and N. Stenger, "Multipole plasmons and their disappearance in few-nanometer silver nanoparticles", Nature Communications 6, 8788 (2015)<br />[6] J. Clausen, E. Hojlund-Nielsen, A. Christiansen, S. Yaszdi, M. Grajower, H. Taha, U. Levy, A. Kristensen, and N.A. Mortensen, "Plasmonic metasurfaces for coloration of plastic consumer products", Nano Lett. 14, 4499 (2014)<br />[7] X. Zhu, C. Vannahme, E. Hojlund-Nielsen, N.A. Mortensen, and A. Kristensen, "Plasmonic colour laser printing", Nature Nanotechnology 11, 325 (2016)</p>
2016-06-07 20:30:00 to 2016-06-07 21:30:00Prof. N. Asger Mortensen (Technical University of Denmark (DTU))https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2146Special Seminar: Integrated Measurement and Modeling for Performance and Powerhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/special-seminar-integrated-measurement-and-modeling-performance-and-power
<p>In this presentation we will describe methodologies for integrated measurement and modeling of power and performance for extreme scale systems and applications. Methodologies to be considered, being developed in the recently formed Center for Advanced Technology Evaluation (CENATE), are practical, accurate, and allow for the possibility of addressing the problem for full systems and applications. A particular emphasis will be placed on applying validated models to a variety of design and optimization uses for computing at extreme-scale.</p>
2016-06-03 22:00:00 to 2016-06-03 23:00:00Dr. Adolfy Hoisie (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2141IT-Forumhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/it-forum-26
<p>The urge to communicate, to speak and be heard, is a fundamental human need. However, embedded within our increasingly sophisticated communication networks, Big Brother is often watching. There are situations where even the fact that communication is happening (not just the content of that communication), can have real-world consequences. For instance, if you are a politically active citizen in an authoritarian society with broad censorship powers, the mere fact that you are communicating with the outside world can be construed by those authorities as sufficient justification for reprisals.</p>
<p>There has been a flurry of recent work in the information theory community dealing with this problem. In general, this problem encompasses models of communication with dual goals. Firstly, all communication from the source (Alice) to the destination (Bob) should be reliable, i.e., the communication protocol should be resilient to random noise, and perhaps even active jamming. Secondly, if the communication is overheard by a third party (Eve), it should be deniable from Eve. That is, not only should Eve should not learn anything about the source's message, in fact Eve should not even be able to reliably decide whether or not the source is indeed communicating to Bob. To be able to instantiate such deniability in communication, there need to be asymmetries that might exist between Bob and Eve (for instance, perhaps the noise on the channel to Eve is higher than the noise on the channel to Bob, or perhaps Eve observes only a subset of the transmissions that Bob does).</p>
<p>The tools used are typically information-theoretic and/or coding-theoretic in nature. Typically, deniability is formally defined in terms of a hypothesis-testing metric, and then one demands that the communication protocol that is reliable to Bob also have "high deniability", regardless of Eve's estimation strategy. Recently, in various communication settings (wired, wireless and quantum channels/networks), fundamental bounds on optimal rates for deniable communication, and also complementary schemes that are close to optimal.</p>
2016-06-03 20:00:00 to 2016-06-03 21:00:00Sidharth Jaggi (The Chinese University of Hong Kong)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2144SystemX Seminarhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/systemx-seminar-35
<p>A problem not often considered with mobile device chargers and other appliances that use electrical outlets is reducing the quiescent power loss due to solid-state device leakage when the appliance is not in use. Could micro-electromechanical (MEM) relays be used to aid in eliminating this vampire power because of their extremely high off-resistance? Initial work on the use of a single four-terminal MEM relay in conventional buck and boost converters will be presented. This talk will include an overview of electrostatically actuated MEM relay operation, characterization, including typical challenges encountered during probe station testing, and failure mechanisms. In addition, analytical solutions that account for non-idealities, simulated, and measured results will be presented for buck and boost DC-DC converters in both discontinuous conduction mode (DCM) and continuous condition mode (CCM).</p>
2016-06-02 23:30:00 to 2016-06-03 00:30:00Scott Block, UC Davishttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/2143EE380 Computer Systems Colloquiumhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/ee380-computer-systems-colloquium-32
<p><strong>"Big Data"</strong> means different things to different people. To me, it means one of four totally different problems:</p>
<p><strong>Big volumes of data, but "small" analytics</strong>. The traditional data warehouse vendors support SQL analytics on very large volumes of data. In this talk, I make a few comments on where I see this market going, and possible technical disruptions ahead.<br />Big analytics on big volumes of data. By big analytics, I mean data clustering, regressions, machine learning, and other much more complex analytics on very large amounts of data. I will explain the various approaches to integrating complex analytics into DBMSs, and discuss which ones seem more promising.</p>
<p><strong>Big velocity</strong>. By this I mean being able to absorb and process a firehose of incoming data for applications like electronic trading. In this market, the traditional SQL vendors are a non-starter. I will discuss alternatives including complex event processing (CEP), NoSQL and NewSQL systems. I will also make a few comments about the "internet of things".</p>
<p><strong>Big Diversity</strong>. Many enterprises are faced with integrating a larger and larger number of data sources with diverse data (spreadsheets, web sources, XML, traditional DBMSs). The traditional ETL products do not appear up to the challenges of this new world, and I talk about alternate ways to go, and conclude that this is the "800 pound gorilla in the corner".</p>
2016-06-01 23:30:00 to 2016-06-02 00:30:00Michael Stonebraker (MIT)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2140Fuse: study nighthttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/fuse-study-night-20
<p>Spring quarter '16 study nights are every Tuesday at 8pm in the Fuse room (Packard 318).</p>
<p>Snacks will be provided to fuel good work. We hope to see you there!</p>
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<p><em><strong>-Fuse</strong></em></p>
2016-06-01 03:00:00N/Ahttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/2054Applied Physics/Physics Colloquiumhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/applied-physicsphysics-colloquium-27
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<p>Nearly a hundred years after its discovery, superconductivity remains one of the most intriguing phases of matter. In 1957 Bardeen, Cooper and Schrieffer (BCS) presented their theory of superconductivity, describing this state in terms of pairs of electrons arranged in a spatially isotropic wave function with no net momentum and a spin singlet configuration. Immediately thereafter, a search began to find materials with unconventional superconductivity where pairing deviates from conventional BCS theory. One particular class of unconventional superconductors involves pairs arranged in triplet rather than singlet configurations. Such superconductors may enable dissipationless transport of spin and may also give rise to elementary excitations that do not obey the conventional Fermi or Bose statistics but rather have non-Abelian statistics, where the exchange of two particles transforms the state of the system into a new quantum mechanical state. In this talk I will describe some of our recent experiments that explore the proximity effect between a conventional superconductor and a semiconductor with strong spin-orbit interaction. Using supercurrent interference, we show that we can tune the induced superconductivity continuously from conventional to unconventional that is from singlet to triplet. Our results open up new possibilities for exploring unconventional superconductivity as well as new ways for detecting unconventional pairing in known materials.</p>
<hr /><p>Held Tuesdays at 4:30 pm in the William R. Hewlett Teaching Center, room 201.</p>
<p>Refreshments in the lobby of Varian Physics at 4:15 pm.</p>
<p><em>Spring 2015/2016, Committee: M. Schleier-Smith (Chair), G. Gratta, B. Lev, S. Zhang</em></p>
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2016-05-31 23:30:00 to 2016-06-01 00:30:00Amir Yacoby (Harvard University)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2063US-ATMC (EE402T) Seminarhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/us-atmc-ee402t-seminar-6
<p>Our panel of three Stanford alumni provide diverse perspectives into the ways in which Asian economies will play a part in the future of Silicon Valley: as important markets, as sources of new businesses for the U.S., and as sources of leaders for the next generation of innovation. Will increasing ease of communications and data transfer lead to more internationally distributed startups? What are the leadership challenges for Asians and Asian Americans in the future of the Valley? How can Silicon Valley keep up, as Asia economies become more robust in generating globally focused startups?</p>
<p><em>Public welcome : no RSVP necessary : light refreshments</em></p>
<hr /><p>Over the course of our 9 week public seminar series, we will explore the most recent trends, patterns, and challenges of entrepreneurship in Asia and their relevance to Silicon Valley and the U.S. Guest speakers include entrepreneurs, investors and mentors, and other experts on the current entrepreneurial ecosystems of major Asia economies.</p>
2016-05-31 23:30:00Dr. David Brunner (ModuleQ), Buck Gee (Ascend), and Jeonghee Jin (Vingle)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2074Memorial Day (no classes)https://ee.stanford.edu/event/department/memorial-day
<p>Memorial Day</p>
<p>(No Classes)</p>
2016-05-30 15:00:00 to 2016-05-31 02:00:00https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2121SystemX Seminarhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/systemx-seminar-34
<p>Receiver architectures and circuits for the 5G technologies will be reviewed in this presentation. Two possible architectural directions towards 5G are considered.</p>
<p>From the SNR point of view, we can think of the sensitivity radio (or the long-distance radio) as the one extreme, and the maximum throughput radio (or the short-distance radio) as another extreme.</p>
<p>From the technology point of view, we can think of the co-working cellular radio (or the 3G/4G/4G+ radio) as the one extreme, and the co-working connectivity-cellular radio (4G+/WLAN radio) as the another extreme.</p>
<p>All these cellular and connectivity technologies 'speak' different standardization languages, but from the RF IC design point of view there are many similarities that could be used to build a universal radio working across all the SNRs, distances, throughputs, and technologies from the very same circuits. In this presentation, the receiver architectures and circuits meeting this common goal of 'all-in-1' radio will be put up for a consideration.</p>
<p>An 'imaginary' local very-high throughput personal network (radio-belt) is introduced as a vehicle to build a 5G system with a 10Gb/s data rate. Design trade-offs among different modulation schemes, bandwidths, bands, and MIMO and beamforming signal-processing techniques are discussed throughout the presentation and their impact on the 5G circuit and architecture design outlined.</p>
2016-05-26 23:30:00 to 2016-05-27 00:30:00Dr. Aleksander Tasic (Qualcomm)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2138Information Systems Lab (ISL) Colloquiumhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/information-systems-lab-isl-colloquium
<p>I will discuss strategies to gracefully scale machine learning on modern parallel computational platforms. A common approach to such scaling is coordination-free parallel algorithms, where individual processors run independently without communication, thus maximizing the time they compute. However, analyzing the performance of these algorithms can be challenging, as they often introduce race conditions and synchronization problems.</p>
<p>In this talk, I will introduce a general methodology for analyzing asynchronous parallel algorithms. The key idea is to model the effects of core asynchrony as noise in the algorithmic input. This allows us to understand the performance of several popular asynchronous machine learning approaches, and to determine when asynchrony effects might overwhelm them. To overcome these effects, I will propose a new framework for parallelizing ML algorithms, where all memory conflicts and race conditions can be completely avoided. I will discuss the implementation of these ideas in practice, and demonstrate that they outperform the state-of-the-art across several machine learning tasks.</p>
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<p><em>Refreshments will be served after the talk.</em></p>
2016-05-26 23:15:00 to 2016-05-27 00:15:00Dimitris Papailiopoulos (UC Berkeley)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2139EE380 Computer Systems Colloquiumhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/ee380-computer-systems-colloquium-33
<p>Many important mathematical problems, ranging from cryptography, network routing, and protein folding, require the exploration a large number of candidate solutions. Because the time required for solving these problems grows exponentially with their size, electronic computers, which operate sequentially, cannot solve them in a reasonable timeframe. Unfortunately, the parallel-computation approaches proposed so far, e.g., DNA-, and quantum-computing, suffer from fundamental and practical drawbacks, which prevented their successful implementation. On the other hand, biological entities, from microorganisms to humans, process information in parallel, routinely, for essential tasks, such as foraging, searching for available space, competition, and cooperation. However, aside of their sheer complexity, parallel biological processes are difficult to harness for artificial parallel computation because of a fundamental difference: biological entities process analog information, e.g., concentration gradients, whereas computing devices require the processing of numbers. This subtle, but important difference between artificial and biological computation, together with the opportunity to operate biocomputation with large numbers of (small) biological agents, opens three possible avenues for development.</p>
<p>Biological IT. The first opportunity relies on the study of the natural procedures used by biological agents, e.g., for space search and partitioning, chemotaxis, etc., followed by the translation of these procedures in abstract mathematical algorithms. These bioinspired algorithms can be then benchmarked against standard analogues used for similar tasks, and, if appropriate, improved and implemented. Along this development avenue, which is conceptually similar to other biomimetics efforts, such as biomimetic materials, we have shown that fungi used exquisitely efficient algorithms for search for available space; and that the chemotaxis procedures used by bacteria can be used to find edges of geometrical patterns.</p>
<p>Biosimulation. The second opportunity relies on the capacity of using large numbers of biological agents to explore complex networks which mimic real traffic situations. This line of development has been almost entirely dedicated to the study of network optimization performed by amoeboid organisms, e.g., Physarum, placed in geometrically confined environments which also contain chemotactic 'cues', e.g., larger concentrations of nutrients in set coordinates. This physical simulation of traffic networks resulted in many studies assessing the optimality of real traffic networks in many countries.</p>
<p>Biocomputation with biological agents in networks. Finally, the third, and arguably the most exciting development consists in the use of very large number of agents exploring purposefully-designed microfluidics networks. For instance, we reported the foundations of a parallel-computation system in which a given combinatorial problem is encoded into a graphical, modular network that is embedded in a nanofabricated planar device. Exploring the network in a parallel fashion using a large number of independent, agents, e.g., molecular motor-propelled agents, then solves the mathematical problem. This approach uses orders of magnitude less energy than conventional computers, thus addressing issues related to power consumption and heat dissipation.</p>
<p>The lecture will conclude with a perspective on the computation and simulation using biological entities in microfluidics structures, weighing the opportunities and challenges offered by various technological avenues.</p>
2016-05-25 23:30:00 to 2016-05-26 00:30:00Danel Nicolau (McGill University)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2040The Next Generation of VRhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/next-generation-vr
<p>Rabbit Hole VR is hosting a student-focused VR/AR event at Stanford! There will be Vives, Rifts, Gears, Cardboards, 360 video, state-of-the-art controllers, and tons of crazy cool devices.</p>
<p>There will be two amazing panels 4-4:5pm, and 5:15-6pm from VR/AR experts and entrepreneurs who joined the industry from a wide variety of fields and backgrounds and are now leading the VR/AR revolution.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><em>Sponsors include Wevr, Altspace, Nvida, Jaunt VR, and more!</em></p>
2016-05-25 22:00:00 to 2016-05-26 01:00:00sponsored by Rabbit Hole VRhttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/2137Fuse: study nighthttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/fuse-study-night-20
<p>Spring quarter '16 study nights are every Tuesday at 8pm in the Fuse room (Packard 318).</p>
<p>Snacks will be provided to fuel good work. We hope to see you there!</p>
<p> </p>
<p><em><strong>-Fuse</strong></em></p>
2016-05-25 03:00:00N/Ahttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/2054Applied Physics/Physics Colloquiumhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/applied-physicsphysics-colloquium-26
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<p>The testing of quantum devices poses unique new challenges: although the description of the quantum state of a system scales exponentially in the size of the system, the laws of quantum mechanics limit the information that can be accessed by measuring the system to be linear in its size. This restriction, together with the mismatch in the computational power of quantum and classical systems appear to rule out any general strategy for the classical testing of quantum devices.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, over the past few years there has emerged a new theory of quantum testing that exploits unique features of quantum mechanics to get around these obstacles. This theory has resulted in provably secure quantum cryptography with untrusted quantum devices and certifiable random number generators. It has also resulted in protocols for testing that a claimed quantum computer is truly quantum. On a more philosophical level, these new protocols shed new light on what it might mean to test quantum mechanics in certain regimes.</p>
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<p>Held Tuesdays at 4:30 pm in the William R. Hewlett Teaching Center, room 201.</p>
<p>Refreshments in the lobby of Varian Physics at 4:15 pm.</p>
<p><em>Spring 2015/2016, Committee: M. Schleier-Smith (Chair), G. Gratta, B. Lev, S. Zhang</em></p>
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2016-05-24 23:30:00 to 2016-05-25 00:30:00Umesh Vazirani (UC Berkeley)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2062US-ATMC (EE402T) Seminarhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/us-atmc-ee402t-seminar-5
<p><strong>"New Trends in Social Entrepreneurship in India: The Bombay Hemp Company, Ltd. (BOHECO)"</strong></p>
<p><strong>Panel Discussion:</strong></p>
<ul><li>Sanvar Oberoi, Director of Finance &amp; Digital Technology, Bombay Hemp Company</li>
<li>Radhika Shah, Co-President, Stanford Angels and Entrepreneurs and Advisor, Sustainable Development Goals Philanthropy Platform</li>
</ul><hr /><p>One of the outcomes of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) in 2012, was a set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals, which were officially signed by the UN heads of state and high representatives on September 27, 2015. The SDG Philanthropy Platform (sdgfunders.org), launched by the UN Development Program, Foundation Center, and the Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, brings hundreds of foundations and philanthropists across many countries to create new partnerships to increase funding and create programs that will have greater, and more sustainable, impact on people's lives. Of course, the achievement of the SDGs itself must reflect sustainable processes, and so Ms. Shah will also discuss new platforms of social entrepreneurship in India, e.g. "Fourth Sector" for-benefit corporations.</p>
<p>One example of a company targeting an SDG is the Bombay Hemp Co., Ltd. (BOHECO), India's first Industrial Hemp and Medicinal Cannabis company. BOHECO aims to reform the agriculture industry and uplift socio-economic standards of local farmers in India. They work with local industry and farmers to manufacture and innovate agro-products for pharmaceutical, construction, energy, paper, food, textile, lubricants, automobile, oil and cordage industries from the industrial hemp crop and now are working to use this model pan-India for poverty alleviation, empowerment, and rural development.</p>
<p>India has long been a recipient of philanthropic approaches and also for-profit companies that target "bottom of the pyramid" markets; this session will provide insights into the most recent dynamics and regulatory system refinements in India that may serve as a model across various developing economies.</p>
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2016-05-24 23:30:00 to 2016-05-25 00:50:00Panel Discussionhttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/2073How MEMS and Entrepreneurs are Driving IoThttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/how-mems-and-entrepreneurs-are-driving-iot
<p>The application of MEMS sensors and other devices into mobile products is a recent phenomenon, only about 8 years. But, this new use of MEMS technology has caused the field to skyrocket. The MEMS market is now over $15B and rising twice as fast, on an annual basis, as the semiconductor market. Previously reticent silicon foundries are embracing MEMS enthusiastically. New MEMS inventions, largely coming out of academia, are revolutionizing how we sense and interact with the world around us. The combination of MEMS, wireless technology, growing IoT markets, growing health-monitoring markets, and the worldwide entrepreneurial environment will be catapulting MEMS to new heights in the next 10 years. While about 8 key MEMS technologies are in very high volume production today, another 15-20 new, high volume products are on the horizon. The current support infrastructure for entrepreneurs is making it even easier to transition such R&amp;D devices into production. We will discuss the past and future of MEMS and how the new entrepreneurial culture is transforming the evolution of IoT.</p>
2016-05-24 23:30:00 to 2016-05-25 00:30:00Kurt Petersen, Ph.D. (Silicon Valley Band of Angels)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2136EE State of the Departmenthttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/department/ee-state-department-0
<p><strong>You are Invited to Attend EE's Annual State of the Department Meeting:</strong></p>
<ul><li>Come hear about new developments in the department and ways that student and faculty groups are supporting our community.</li>
<li>Additionally, you'll have the opportunity to ask questions during a Q&amp;A session with the Department Chair.</li>
<li>Free food &amp; drinks will be served during the HappEE Hour. Please bring proof of age (21+) if you plan on drinking alcohol.</li>
<li>Plus, we're giving away prizes:
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<ul><li>All attendees may enter a raffle for a $50 gift card (must be present to win)</li>
<li>Everyone who submits a question* may enter a separate raffle for a $50 gift card (not necessary to be present)
</li>
</ul><li>*<a href="http://goo.gl/forms/XinWWyKrsH" target="_blank">Submit questions</a> that you would like addressed during the meeting. We welcome any questions about the EE department, academics, and student life. Everyone who submits a question is eligible to win a $50 gift card.</li>
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<p> </p>
<p><strong>This meeting is open to all members of the EE community.</strong><br /><strong>We hope to see you there!</strong></p>
<p><em>- EE Student Life Committee, GSEE &amp; Fuse</em></p>
2016-05-24 23:00:00Varioushttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/2113SystemX Seminarhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/systemx-seminar-33
<p>Visual object detection and recognition are needed for a wide range of applications including robotics/drones, self-driving cars, smart Internet of Things, and portable/wearable electronics. For many of these applications, local embedded processing is preferred due to privacy or latency concerns. In this talk, we will describe how joint algorithm and hardware design can be used to reduce the energy consumption of object detection and recognition while delivering real-time and robust performance. We will discuss several energy-efficient techniques that exploit sparsity, reduce data movement and storage costs, and show how they can be applied to popular forms of object detection and recognition, including those that use deep convolutional neural nets (CNNs). We will present results from recently fabricated ASICs (including our deep CNN accelerator named "Eyeriss") that demonstrate these techniques in real-time computer vision systems.</p>
2016-05-23 23:30:00Prof. Vivienne Sze (MIT)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2130EE Distinguished Lecture: Towards Quantum Computing With Superconducting Circuits: Extending the Lifetime of Information Through Quantum Error Correctionhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/department/ee-distinguished-lecture-towards-quantum-computing-superconducting-circuits
<p>Dramatic progress has been made in the last decade and a half towards realizing solid-state systems for quantum information processing with superconducting quantum circuits. Artificial atoms (or qubits) based on Josephson junctions have improved their coherence times more than a million-fold, have been entangled, and used to perform simple quantum algorithms. The next challenge for the field is demonstrating quantum error correction that actually improves the lifetimes, a necessary step for building more complex systems.</p>
<p>Here we demonstrate a fully operational quantum error correction system, based on a logical encoding comprised of superpositions of cat states in a superconducting cavity. This system uses real-time classical feedback to encode, track the naturally occurring errors, decode, and correct, all without the need for post-selection. Using this approach we reach, for the first time, the break-even point for QEC and preserve quantum information through active means.</p>
<p>Moreover, the performance of the system matches with predictions, and can be dramatically improved by making the protocol more fault tolerant. Mastering the practice of error correction, and understanding the overhead and complexity required, are the main scientific challenges remaining for reaching scalable quantum computation with this technology.</p>
2016-05-23 22:00:00Robert Schoelkopf, Sterling Professor of Applied Physics and Physics (Yale University)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2129US-ATMC (EE402A) Special Seminarhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/us-atmc-ee402a-special-seminar-1
<p>The on-demand economy, exemplified by companies like Lyft, Airbnb, TaskRabbit and more, helps consumers (providers) find value in assets they already have – cars, homes, skills, insights. Data from TaskRabbit indicates an opportunity for Taskers to earn up to $150K per year by joining the service as a provider. Similarly, for consumers of on-demand services, the on-demand economy helps lower frictions or barriers to services, be it transportation or lodging or assembly of furniture.</p>
<p>For businesses, on-demand economies provide new opportunities to "upskill" people and also necessitate new ways of thinking about traditional assets, such as the car.</p>
<p>In this panel discussion, we will learn from those at the frontlines of this economy, on how the on-demand economy has impacted the US and how it can impact Japan.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Presented by <em>Japan Society of Northern California and the US-Asia Technology Management Center</em></p>
2016-05-21 00:30:00 to 2016-05-21 04:00:00Panel Discussionhttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/2124IT-Forumhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/it-forum-25
<p>In communication networks, cooperation is a strategy in which communicators exchange information not for the purpose of sending messages one to the other but instead for the purpose of enabling improved communication performance somewhere else in the network. For example, the transmitters of a multiple access channel may exchange information not because either has a message intended for the other but instead to increase the total rate at which both can communicate to the receiver. Measuring the cost of cooperation as the amount of information exchanged and the benefit of cooperation as the increase in sum-capacity to the intended receiver, we can ask simple yet surprisingly rich questions about when cooperation is worth its cost and how big the gains can be.</p>
2016-05-20 20:00:00 to 2016-05-20 21:00:00Michelle Effros Professor (Caltech)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2128SystemX Seminarhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/systemx-seminar-32
<p>Phenomenal growth in the use of mobile wireless, and ubiquitous sensor products has fueled a resurgence of excitement in the semiconductor industry. In spite of increasing investment costs and predictions of doom and gloom, these are exciting times in the semiconductor innovation pipeline for those that are willing to adapt and make adjustments.</p>
<p>This seminar will offer a discussion of the important technical and business challenges, and the myriad of opportunities. The focus will be on Innovation and Entrepreneurship opportunities. Leveraging the industry's use of collaborative research and development, and the Fabless Integrated Circuits model provides many opportunities for new ideas. Because the success rate of start-up companies remains relatively low, innovators need to pay attention to a broad spectrum of factors besides their technical idea. This seminar will provide guidelines for innovators to launch companies with increased probabilities of success. Using the Fabless IC startup learnings as a base, this course will offer hope for entrepreneurs, researchers, and designers in fulfilling their dreams.</p>
2016-05-19 23:30:00 to 2016-05-20 00:30:00Dr. Rakesh Kumar (TCX Technology Connexions)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2126EE Computer Systems Colloquiumhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/ee-computer-systems-colloquium
<p>Since 2013, a stream of disclosures have prompted reconsideration of surveillance law and policy. One of the most controversial principles, both in the United States and abroad, is that communications metadata receives substantially less protection than communications content. Several nations currently collect telephone metadata in bulk, including on their own citizens. In this paper, we attempt to shed light on the privacy properties of telephone metadata. Using a novel crowdsourcing methodology, we demonstrate that telephone metadata is densely interconnected, can trivially be re-identified, and can be used to draw sensitive inferences.</p>
2016-05-18 23:30:00 to 2016-05-19 00:30:00Jonathan Mayer (FCC) and Patrick Mutchler (Stanford)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2125Fuse: study nighthttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/fuse-study-night-20
<p>Spring quarter '16 study nights are every Tuesday at 8pm in the Fuse room (Packard 318).</p>
<p>Snacks will be provided to fuel good work. We hope to see you there!</p>
<p> </p>
<p><em><strong>-Fuse</strong></em></p>
2016-05-18 03:00:00N/Ahttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/2054Applied Physics/Physics Colloquiumhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/applied-physicsphysics-colloquium-25
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<p>I will discuss recent developments at a new scientific interface between quantum optics, nanoscience and quantum information science. Specific examples include the use of quantum optical techniques for manipulation of individual atom-like impurities at a nanoscale and for realization of hybrid systems combining them with nanophotonic devices. I will discuss how these techniques are used for exploring quantum nonlinear optics and quantum networks, probing non-equilibrium quantum dynamics, and developing new applications such as magnetic resonance imaging with single atom resolution, and nanoscale sensing in biology and material science.</p>
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<p>Held Tuesdays at 4:30 pm in the William R. Hewlett Teaching Center, room 201.</p>
<p>Refreshments in the lobby of Varian Physics at 4:15 pm.</p>
<p><em>Spring 2015/2016, Committee: M. Schleier-Smith (Chair), G. Gratta, B. Lev, S. Zhang</em></p>
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2016-05-17 23:30:00 to 2016-05-18 00:30:00Mikhail Lukin (Harvard University)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2061US-ATMC (EE402T) Seminarhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/us-atmc-ee402t-seminar-4
<p><strong>"Entrepreneurship in the Philippines: 2016 Ecosystem Update"</strong></p>
<p><strong>Global Filipino Network Panel Discussion:</strong></p>
<ul><li>Christina Laskowski, President, Science and Technology Advisory Council Silicon Valley</li>
<li>Sanny Leviste, Special Projects Consultant, Filipino-American Chamber of Commerce of Silicon Valley</li>
<li>Minette Navarrete, President, Kickstart Ventures, Inc.</li>
<li>Chris Peralta, Founder and CEO of Manila Valley and Connect People</li>
</ul><hr /><p> </p>
<p>Over the course of our 9 week public seminar series, we will explore the most recent trends, patterns, and challenges of entrepreneurship in Asia and their relevance to Silicon Valley and the U.S. Guest speakers include entrepreneurs, investors and mentors, and other experts on the current entrepreneurial ecosystems of major Asia economies.</p>
2016-05-17 23:30:00 to 2016-05-18 00:50:00Global Filipino Networkhttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/2072SystemX Spring Conferencehttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/general/systemx-spring-conference
<p><a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1FaIB9OK3oTttXZarbUUenwnQNYZ4gHzOvfC7IG8yCls/viewform" target="_blank">REGISTRATION is REQUIRED</a>.</p>
<hr /><p><strong>Tuesday, May 17 (Day 1</strong>) - starts with a SystemX overview given by Prof. Boris Murmann and Prof. Philip Wong, SystemX's faculty directors. This will be followed by overviews of our Focus Areas by their respective faculty leaders. Breakout sessions for Heterogeneous Integration and Internet of Everything will follow in the afternoon. The day concludes with an FMA student poster session / industry mixer, reception from 4:45 - 6:30 pm.</p>
<p><strong>Wednesday, May 18 (Day 2)</strong> - begins with updates from Stanford's Mechanical Eng Department and Neurosciences Institute, followed by technology talks on Nanophotonics and Quantum Encryption. The afternoon will hold breakout sessions for the Computation and Bio Interfaces Focus Areas, after which member company representatives will assemble for our Business Meeting. The day concludes with the SystemX Dinner at the Stanford Faculty Club.</p>
<p><strong>Thursday, November 19 (Day 3)</strong> - will hold the breakout sessions for the Energy/Power Management Systems and the Design Productivity Focus Areas. The day will end at noon.</p>
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2016-05-17 15:00:00 to 2016-05-19 19:00:00Varioushttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/2086Stanford Friends of Physics Special Lectureshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/stanford-friends-physics-special-lectures-0
<p>Superconductivity is perhaps the most spectacular macroscopic quantum phenomenon. A "persistent current" in a ring of superconducting wire will continue to flow forever—a laboratory realization of perpetual motion. A voltage across a junction between two superconductors produces an oscillating current with a frequency that is determined exactly by the voltage and the fundamental constant of quantum mechanics, Planck's constant. Superconductivity is the quintessential example of an "emergent phenomenon" in physics, in which the collective behavior cannot be understood in terms of the properties of any finite collection of microscopic constituents (i.e., electrons). Notable physicists including Einstein, Heisenberg, and Feynman tried and failed for half a century to achieve the basic understanding of superconductivity that was only achieved in the mid 1950's and early 1960's. However, many fundamental issues remain to be resolved, including those related to the more recent discovery of unconventional "high temperature superconductivity" in a variety of synthetic metals, and the construction of coherent superconducting "Q-bits," which act as laboratory realizations of Schrodinger's cat.</p>
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<p>Greetings, Friends of Physics! We hope some of you can attend the upcoming SITP mini-course by Steven Kivelson, the Prabhu Goel Family Professor of Physics. Professor Kivelson is a leading researcher in theoretical condensed matter physics at the Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics (SITP).</p>
<p>SITP mini-courses feature SITP faculty members lecturing on their fields and research. The presentations are intended for audiences with an interest in learning about science more deeply than the level of popular media, and some scientific or mathematical background. You are welcome to attend the lectures in person or access them on the web when they are posted (see below).</p>
2016-05-17 02:00:00 to 2016-05-17 03:30:00Prof. Steve Kivelson (Stanford)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2118SystemX Seminarhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/systemx-seminar-31
<p>Large-scale recording of neural signals is essential for gaining a better understanding of the elaborate, dynamic picture of the brain that emerges from interactions involving individual cells and complex neural circuits. Over the past few decades neural recording capabilities have progressed from single unit in vitro recordings to massively multichannel monitoring in vivo. Currently, microwire and microfabricated silicon neural probes are capable of sensing the simultaneous activity of hundreds of neurons. Miniaturized recording systems based on custom CMOS integrated circuits have been developed that can record from around 16-100 channels simultaneously, and these are no bigger than a postage stamp. Another wave of innovation is needed to enable next-generation neural interfaces that will provide high resolution access to 1,000-10,000 neurons and beyond.</p>
<p>Beyond understanding the brain, another "killer app" for neural interfaces is to directly connect prosthetic devices to a patient's nervous system. For example, cochlear implants today provide a sense of sound to over 100,000 patients in the US alone, including congenitally deaf children who now participate in music classes. Retinal prosthetics that provide artificial sight are currently being translated into medical products, with ongoing clinical trials inside and outside the US. Next on the horizon are motor prosthetics that allow paralyzed individuals to interact with the physical and cyber worlds. Bidirectional (read/write) motor prosthetics are being created at University of Utah that provide high degree of freedom control of mechanical prostheses while simultaneously invoking hundreds of different percepts generated by sensors and communicated to the patient through stimulation electrodes. Systems like these are comprised of many hardware and software components stretched to performance limits, offering a wealth opportunity for EE researchers.</p>
2016-05-12 23:30:00Dr. Ross Walker (University of Utah)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2119ISL Colloquiumhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/isl-colloquium-14
<p>In this paper we propose and study local linear and polynomial based estimators for implementing Approximate Bayesian Computation (ABC) style indirect inference and GMM estimators. This method makes use of nonparametric regression in the computation of GMM and Indirect Inference models. We provide formal conditions under which frequentist inference is asymptotically valid and demonstrate the validity of the estimated posterior quantiles for confidence interval construction. We also show that in this setting, local linear kernel regression methods have theoretical advantages over local constant kernel methods that are also reflected in finite sample simulation results. Our results also apply to both exactly and over identified models. These estimators do not need to rely on numerical optimization or Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) simulations. They provide an effective complement to the classical M-estimators and to MCMC methods, and can be applied to both likelihood based models and method of moment based models.</p>
2016-05-12 23:15:00 to 2016-05-13 00:15:00Han Hong (Stanford)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2122SmartGrid Seminarhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/smartgrid-seminar-16
<p>For the past six years, Pecan Street has operated one of the nation's most data-intensive research investigations on residential electricity and water use, behavioral response and field performance of different measurement devices. Using smart meters, gateway devices and CT-collar systems, Pecan Street researchers have measured appliance-level electricity use every minute in nearly a thousand homes in 20 states, including measuring generation from rooftop solar panels in over 250 homes and home EV charging in over 70 homes. In late 2013, Pecan Street launched Dataport, which makes all of the data from this ongoing multi-year investigation available to the academic research community for free in an online searchable database. Dataport's academic Research Board has estimated Dataport to be the world's largest research database on customer end uses of electricity and water.</p>
<p>The presentation draws on original data from this research to provide preliminary insights and identify research questions related to consumer behavioral response, residential battery systems, electric vehicle charging, solar PV generation's alignment with customer use patterns and the role of data.</p>
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<p>Our speakers will discuss exciting new ideas and technologies that are changing the electricity industry. The theme of the seminar series is on smart grids and energy systems, with speakers from academic institutions and industry. The hour-long seminars, including ample time for discussion, are held at 1:00 pm or 1:15 pm approximately every Thursday.</p>
<p>This seminar is offered as a 1 unit seminar course, CEE 272T/EE292T for interested students. This course can be repeated for credit for the students.</p>
2016-05-12 20:30:00Brewster McCracken (Pecan Street, Inc.)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2079William C. Reynolds Memorial Seminarhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/william-c-reynolds-memorial-seminar
<p>If "form defines function", our usual assumption may be that a "perfect form" is needed to provide "perfect functions" for a device, whether the function involves precision sensing, or the storing or transmission of information. However, a great deal of recent excitement has centered on defects in diamond. The "nitrogen-vacancy" pairs a carbon vacancy in the crystal with a substitutional nitrogen atom. This defect can display outstanding spin coherence, uniquely coupled to a distinctive photon signature, providing exceptional opportunities for preparing, reading out and transmitting spin states by optical means. And yet the diamond NVs appear to be only one of a wealth of still to be discovered spin-photon-active defects that could span a wide swathe of photon energies and applications. This talk will focus on the formation of sensitive optical amplifiers (nanocavities) for these defects, in both diamond and SiC, detailing the challenges and delicacy of the fabrication processes to preserve the defects and enhance their signatures.</p>
<p><em>Reception prior to the seminar 4:30 – 5:00 p.m.</em></p>
2016-05-12 00:00:00 to 2016-05-12 01:00:00Dr. Evelyn Hu (Harvard)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2103EE380 Computer Systems Colloquiumhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/ee380-computer-systems-colloquium-31
<p>The principle of Propositions as Types links logic to computation. At first sight it appears to be a simple coincidence---almost a pun---but it turns out to be remarkably robust, inspiring the design of theorem provers and programming languages, and continuing to influence the forefronts of computing. Propositions as Types has many names and many origins, and is a notion with depth, breadth, and mystery. [Communications of the ACM, 58(12):75-84, December, 2015.]</p>
2016-05-11 23:30:00 to 2016-05-12 00:30:00Philip Wadler (University of Edinburgh)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2038SCIENhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/scien-11
<p>The recent progress in recognizing visual objects and annotating images has been driven by super-rich models and massive datasets. However, machine vision models still have a very limited 'understanding' of images, rendering them brittle when attempting to generalize to unseen examples. I will describe recent efforts to improve the robustness and accuracy of systems for annotating and retrieving images, first, by using structure in the space of images and fusing various types of information about image labels, and second, by matching structures in visual scenes to structures in their corresponding language descriptions or queries. We apply these approaches to billions of queries and images, to improve search and annotation of public images and personal photos.</p>
2016-05-11 23:15:00 to 2016-05-12 00:15:00Professor Gal Chechik (Google and the Gonda Brain Research Center at Bar-Ilan University in Israel)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2045Fuse: study nighthttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/fuse-study-night-20
<p>Spring quarter '16 study nights are every Tuesday at 8pm in the Fuse room (Packard 318).</p>
<p>Snacks will be provided to fuel good work. We hope to see you there!</p>
<p> </p>
<p><em><strong>-Fuse</strong></em></p>
2016-05-11 03:00:00N/Ahttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/2054Applied Physics/Physics Colloquiumhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/applied-physicsphysics-colloquium-24
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<p>The fractional quantum Hall fluids are some of the most nontrivial strongly correlated states of matter. Existing theories of the fractional quantum Hall effect relies on the notion of the composite fermion. A long-standing problem of existing theories of the composite fermion is the lack of particle-hole symmetry of the lowest Landau level. I will describe how the particle-hole symmetry took a central role in recent theoretical discussions of the fractional quantum Hall effect; in particular, how a recent synthesis, motivated by the physics of graphene and topological insulators, has led to a new understanding of the low-energy quasiparticle of the half-filled Landau level. According to the new picture, the composite fermion is a Dirac particle with a nontrivial pi Berry phase around the Fermi surface. Distinctive consequences of the new proposal are outlined.</p>
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<p>Held Tuesdays at 4:30 pm in the William R. Hewlett Teaching Center, room 201.</p>
<p>Refreshments in the lobby of Varian Physics at 4:15 pm.</p>
<p><em>Spring 2015/2016, Committee: M. Schleier-Smith (Chair), G. Gratta, B. Lev, S. Zhang</em></p>
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2016-05-10 23:30:00 to 2016-05-11 00:30:00Dam Thanh Son (Univ. of Chicago)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2060US-ATMC (EE402T) Seminarhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/us-atmc-ee402t-seminar-3
<p>Dr. Dinesh Katiyar joined Accel in 2011 and focuses on early-stage, cross-border (US-India) companies.</p>
<p>Dr. Katiyar led Accel's investments in Mindtickle, Paxata, Yakit and Simility. Prior to Accel, he co-founded iLeverage (acquired by E.piphany), SayNow (acquired by Google), and was the CEO of Small Device (acquired by Digital Chocolate). He also held positions with Sun, Motorola and Citrix.</p>
<hr /><p>Over the course of our 9 week public seminar series, we will explore the most recent trends, patterns, and challenges of entrepreneurship in Asia and their relevance to Silicon Valley and the U.S. Guest speakers include entrepreneurs, investors and mentors, and other experts on the current entrepreneurial ecosystems of major Asia economies.</p>
2016-05-10 23:30:00Dinesh Katiyar (Accel)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2071EE Colloquiumhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/department/ee-colloquium-0
<p>Application developers lack tools to profile and compare the energy consumption of different software designs. This energy-optimization task is challenging because of unpredictable interactions between the application and increasingly complex power management logic. Yet, having accurate power information would allow application developers to both avoid inefficient designs and discover opportunities for new optimizations.</p>
<p>In this talk, I will show that it is possible to accurately measure system-level power and attribute it to application activities. I will present BattOr, a portable, easy-to-use power monitor that provides developers with a profile of the energy consumption of their designs—without modifications to hardware or software. I will show how Google developers are using BattOr to improve Chrome's energy efficiency. I will also show how fine-grained understanding of cellular power at different signal strengths enables novel energy optimizations. Finally, I will describe my future plans to attribute system-level power to individual hardware components and to investigate opportunities presented by instrumenting every server in a data center with fine-grained power monitoring.</p>
2016-05-10 23:30:00 to 2016-05-11 00:30:00Aaron Schulman (University of Maryland)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2112SystemX Seminarhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/systemx-seminar-30
<p>Implantable microelectronic devices (IMD) and neuroprostheses are finding applications in new therapies thanks to advancements in microelectronics, microsensors, RF communications, and medicine, which have resulted in embedding more functions in IMDs that occupy smaller space and consume less power, while offering therapies for more complex diseases and disabilities. I will address the latest developments in key building blocks for state-of-the-art IMDs, particularly on the analog front-end, RF back-end, and power management.</p>
<p>IMDs have been quite successful in neuroprosthetic devices, such as cochlear implants and deep brain stimulators. They have been recently approved for vision and are being considered for brain-computer interfacing (BCI) to enable individuals with severe physical disabilities to control their environments. I will also talk about the example of a smart cage, which can wirelessly power, communicate with, and track sensors implanted in or attached to small freely behaving animals. Novel minimally-invasive methods will be presented as well, such as wireless and wearable brain-tongue- computer interface (BTCI), also known as the Tongue Drive System (TDS), which enables individuals with tetraplegia to control their environments using their voluntary tongue motion.</p>
2016-05-10 17:00:00 to 2016-05-10 18:00:00Dr. Maysam Ghovanloo (Georgia Institute of Tech)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2115Stanford Friends of Physics Special Lectureshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/stanford-friends-physics-special-lectures
<p>Superconductivity is perhaps the most spectacular macroscopic quantum phenomenon. A "persistent current" in a ring of superconducting wire will continue to flow forever—a laboratory realization of perpetual motion. A voltage across a junction between two superconductors produces an oscillating current with a frequency that is determined exactly by the voltage and the fundamental constant of quantum mechanics, Planck's constant. Superconductivity is the quintessential example of an "emergent phenomenon" in physics, in which the collective behavior cannot be understood in terms of the properties of any finite collection of microscopic constituents (i.e., electrons). Notable physicists including Einstein, Heisenberg, and Feynman tried and failed for half a century to achieve the basic understanding of superconductivity that was only achieved in the mid 1950's and early 1960's. However, many fundamental issues remain to be resolved, including those related to the more recent discovery of unconventional "high temperature superconductivity" in a variety of synthetic metals, and the construction of coherent superconducting "Q-bits," which act as laboratory realizations of Schrodinger's cat.</p>
<hr /><p> </p>
<p>Greetings, Friends of Physics! We hope some of you can attend the upcoming SITP mini-course by Steven Kivelson, the Prabhu Goel Family Professor of Physics. Professor Kivelson is a leading researcher in theoretical condensed matter physics at the Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics (SITP).</p>
<p>SITP mini-courses feature SITP faculty members lecturing on their fields and research. The presentations are intended for audiences with an interest in learning about science more deeply than the level of popular media, and some scientific or mathematical background. You are welcome to attend the lectures in person or access them on the web when they are posted (see below).</p>
2016-05-10 02:00:00 to 2016-05-10 03:30:00Prof. Steve Kivelson (Stanford)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2117IT-Forumhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/it-forum-24
<p>We study the structure of stable matchings in two-sided random matching markets. First we show that even the slightest imbalance yields an essentially unique stable matching explaining why unique stable matching are empirically ubiquitous. This raises the question of how the composition of the market determines the set of potential matches. Towards this goal we study the communication requirements for reaching a stable matching in tiered random markets. We find that in such markets, a small amount of communication is needed from each agent to reach a stable matching with high probability. In particular, we construct a communication protocol that finds a stable matching with $O(\log^2 n)$ bits of communication on average per agent, and $O(\sqrt{n}\polylog (n))$ bits in worst case for an agent. Our results are tight in the sense that any communication protocol requires at least these costs, both on average and for the worst case agent.</p>
<p>Our construction reveals an illuminating structure of stable matchings. Agents ''apply'' to their favorite agents in a ''target tier'', which is the worst tier they can guarantee to be matched into. On the other hand, each agent maybe reached out by other agents from her top potential tier(s). Our results suggest that agents do not need to know their complete preferences, but only their favorite potential matches in their target tier and their preferences among agents who reach out to them.</p>
<p>Based on joint works with (i) Yash Kanoria and Jacob Leshno, and (ii) with Mark Braverman, Yash Kanoria and Peng Shi.</p>
<hr /><p> </p>
<p>The Information Theory Forum (IT-Forum) at Stanford ISL is an interdisciplinary academic forum which focuses on mathematical aspects of information processing. With a primary emphasis on information theory, we also welcome researchers from signal processing, learning and statistical inference, control and optimization to deliver talks at our forum. We also warmly welcome industrial affiliates in the above fields. The forum is typically held in Packard 202 every Friday at 1:00 pm during the academic year.</p>
<p>The Information Theory Forum is organized by graduate students Jiantao Jiao and Yanjun Han. To suggest speakers, please contact any of the students.</p>
2016-05-06 20:00:00 to 2016-05-06 21:00:00Itai Ashlagi (Stanford)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2026SystemX Seminarhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/systemx-seminar-29
<p>In this talk we'll present the latest results on the integration of silicon-photonic interconnects in several fabrication processes. These include the world's first microprocessor communicating to the outside world with monolithically integrated Si- Photonic devices, as well as the first demonstration of photonics in a bulk CMOS process. We also illustrate some critical aspects of this technology that need to be addressed from integration, circuits and systems side. These breakthroughs pave the way for orders of magnitude improvement in performance of photonically-enhanced VLSI systems.</p>
<p>Moreover, just like integrating the inductor into CMOS in 1990s revolutionized the RF design and enabled mobile revolution, integration of silicon-photonic active and passive devices with CMOS is greatly positioned to revolutionize a number of analog and mixed-signal applications – low- phase noise signal sources and large bandwidth, high-resolution ADCs, to name a few.</p>
<p>Join the SystemX <a href="https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/systemx-seminar" target="_blank">mailing list</a> <br />Additional questions: <a href="mailto:bahr@stanford.edu" target="_blank">Rick Bahr</a>, SystemX Seminar Chair</p>
2016-05-05 23:30:00 to 2016-05-06 00:30:00Dr. Chen Sun (UC Berkeley)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2105OSA Seminarhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/osa-seminar-3
<p>We describe a new class of computational optical sensors and imagers that do not rely on traditional refractive or reflective focusing but instead on special diffractive optical elements integrated with CMOS photodiode arrays. Images are not captured, as in traditional imaging systems, but rather computed from raw photodiode signals. Because such imagers forgo the use of lenses, the sensor portions can be made unprecedentedly small—roughly as small as the cross-section of a human hair. Such imagers have extended depth of field, from roughly 1mm to infinity, and should find use in numerous applications, from endoscopy to infra-red and surveillance imaging, automotive imaging and more. Furthermore, the gratings and signal processing can be tailored to specific applications from visual motion estimation to barcode reading and others.</p>
2016-05-05 23:15:00 to 2016-05-06 00:15:00Dr. David G. Stork (Rambus Labs)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2106SmartGrid Seminarhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/smartgrid-seminar-15
<p>Recent development of the smart grid significantly enhanced the level of automation in the distribution grids. With high level deployment of remote-controlled switches, distribution feeders can be restored efficiently after power outages. In this presentation, computational algorithms for utilization of smart meters, remote control capabilities, and feeder restoration will be discussed together with their practical implementations. The role of microgrids in distribution system restoration will be evaluated. Traditional techniques, however, are not designed for extreme events in the distribution systems. The same is true for widely adopted reliability indices. New thinking of system design and operation will be important for resiliency of future distribution grids.</p>
<hr /><p> </p>
<p>Our speakers will discuss exciting new ideas and technologies that are changing the electricity industry. The theme of the seminar series is on smart grids and energy systems, with speakers from academic institutions and industry. The hour-long seminars, including ample time for discussion, are held at 1:00 pm or 1:15 pm approximately every Thursday.</p>
<p>This seminar is offered as a 1 unit seminar course, CEE 272T/EE292T for interested students. This course can be repeated for credit for the students.</p>
2016-05-05 20:30:00Chen-Ching Liu (Washington State University)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2078EE380 Computer Systems Colloquiumhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/ee380-computer-systems-colloquium-30
<p>On the face of it, the cryptographers have solved their piece of the puzzle but every other aspect of security, from crypto-implementations to operating systems to applications, stinks. We will explore both what lies ahead for the best cooked piece of cybersecurity and what is wrong with security outside cryptography.</p>
2016-05-04 23:30:00 to 2016-05-05 00:30:00Whitfield Diffiehttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/2037Fuse: study nighthttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/fuse-study-night-20
<p>Spring quarter '16 study nights are every Tuesday at 8pm in the Fuse room (Packard 318).</p>
<p>Snacks will be provided to fuel good work. We hope to see you there!</p>
<p> </p>
<p><em><strong>-Fuse</strong></em></p>
2016-05-04 03:00:00N/Ahttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/2054Applied Physics/Physics Colloquiumhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/applied-physicsphysics-colloquium-23
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<p>The relentless pursuit of spectroscopy resolution has been a key drive for many scientific and technological breakthroughs over the past century, including the invention of laser and the creation of ultracold matter. Our state-of-the-art laser now maintains optical phase coherence over multiple seconds and provides this piercing resolution across the entire visible spectrum. The new capability in control of light has enabled us to create and probe novel quantum matter via manipulation of dilute atomic and molecular gases at ultralow temperatures. For the first time, we control the quantum states of more than 1000 atoms so precisely that we achieve a more stable and accurate atomic clock than any existing atomic clocks, with both key clock characteristics reaching the 10-18 level. We use this precision measurement capability to explore novel many-body quantum states with the aim to develop the new frontier of quantum metrology. Such advanced clocks will allow us to test the fundamental laws of nature and enable a wide range of technological applications.</p>
<hr /><p> </p>
<p>Held Tuesdays at 4:30 pm in the William R. Hewlett Teaching Center, room 201.</p>
<p>Refreshments in the lobby of Varian Physics at 4:15 pm.</p>
<p><em>Spring 2015/2016, Committee: M. Schleier-Smith (Chair), G. Gratta, B. Lev, S. Zhang</em></p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
2016-05-03 23:30:00 to 2016-05-04 00:30:00Jun Ye (Univ. of Colorado/NIST)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2059US-ATMC (EE402T) Seminarhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/us-atmc-ee402t-seminar-2
<hr /><p><span>Over the course of our 9 week public seminar series, we will explore the most recent trends, patterns, and challenges of entrepreneurship in Asia and their relevance to Silicon Valley and the U.S. Guest speakers include entrepreneurs, investors and mentors, and other experts on the current entrepreneurial ecosystems of major Asia economies.</span></p>
2016-05-03 23:30:00Keiko Koda (AsMama, Inc.)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2070EE Colloquiumhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/department/ee-colloquium
<p>What do Network flows, Markov chains, discrete-time state-space models of autonomous (undriven) systems, and the PageRank™ Algorithm have in common? The answer is the mathematics that leads, in part, to what some have called Google's ''$25,000,000,000 Eigenvector''—an array of "importance scores" that Google computes and uses to present Web pages in response to each query.</p>
<p>In this presentation, we (i.e., you and I) will set up the basic form of Google's PageRank™ problem as a linear matrix-vector equation. We'll discuss aspects of the equation, and then add bells and whistles to the basic setup so we can explore further the richness of its underlying mathematics and the reach of its applications. You can then decide for yourself whether you agree with authors who have hinted that the centerpiece equation that leads to Google's importance-score vector might deserve a spot in a book of the most beautiful equations ever discovered.</p>
<p>We use PageRank™ in EECS 16A—the first in a two-course sequence in our new freshman-level introduction to EECS at UC Berkeley—to motivate the study of eigenvalues and eigenvectors. Even a casual prior exposure to the notions of linear independence, rank, and null space of a square matrix should make this talk accessible.</p>
2016-05-03 23:30:00 to 2016-05-04 00:30:00Babak Ayazifar (UC Berkeley)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2104Technology scaling after Moore’s Lawhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/technology-scaling-after-moore%25E2%2580%2599s-law
<p>The Moore's Law era enjoyed a long run of lithographically-enabled pitch shrinking that directly reduced the cost per (von Neumann) function, as well as system power and performance improvements, via Dennard scaling. As we enter a post-Moore's Law era, we encounter increasing complexity in MOS VLSI scaling options, with correspondingly complex design limitations, including power limits, parasitics, variability, and of course cost. At the same time, the end systems are becoming more diverse. In the golden era of Moore's Law, system metrics were tightly tied to microprocessor power and performance. With mobile computing, IoT, big data, and ultimately non von Neumann compute systems all relying on underlying transistors scaling, choices may not be as straightforward as the past.</p>
<p>To continue to create compelling product scaling, we will increasingly require direct linking of system requirements to the underlying devices and materials.</p>
2016-05-03 23:30:00 to 2016-05-04 00:30:00Greg Yeric, Ph.D. (ARM)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2107Claude E. Shannon&#039;s 100th Birthdayhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/general/claude-e-shannons-100th-birthday
<p><em>From <a href="http://www.ee.ucla.edu/shannon-centennial/" target="_blank">UCLA Shannon Centennial Celebration</a> website:</em></p>
<p><strong>Claude Shannon</strong> was an American mathematician, electrical engineer, and cryptographer known as "the father of information theory". Shannon founded information theory and is perhaps equally well known for founding both digital computer and digital circuit design theory. Shannon also laid the foundations of cryptography and did basic work on code breaking and secure telecommunications.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>Events taking place around the world are listed at <a href="http://www.itsoc.org/resources/Shannon-Centenary/" target="_blank">IEEE Information Theory Society</a>.</strong></p>
2016-04-30 19:00:00N/Ahttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/2097IT-Forumhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/it-forum-23
<p>Data in the form of noisy pairwise comparisons arises in many domains such as sports, crowdsourcing and operations research. Some fundamental inferential questions include estimating a total or partial order of the items, or estimating the set of underlying pairwise-comparison probabilities. Prior works on these topics often rely on restrictive "parametric" models, that often provide poor fits to the data. Instead, we consider much richer models that rely on "permutations" rather than parameters. We establish tight statistical (information-theoretic) guarantees on estimation under these models, showing that this increased flexibility in the models yields a significantly higher robustness to the estimation procedures, while remarkably, increasing the worst case risk by only logarithmic factors. We also discuss various associated computational challenges.</p>
<p><em>Joint work with Sivaraman Balakrishnan, Adityanand Guntuboyina and Martin J. Wainwright</em></p>
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<p>The Information Theory Forum (IT-Forum) at Stanford ISL is an interdisciplinary academic forum which focuses on mathematical aspects of information processing. With a primary emphasis on information theory, we also welcome researchers from signal processing, learning and statistical inference, control and optimization to deliver talks at our forum. We also warmly welcome industrial affiliates in the above fields. The forum is typically held in Packard 202 every Friday at 1:00 pm during the academic year.</p>
<p>The Information Theory Forum is organized by graduate students Jiantao Jiao and Yanjun Han. To suggest speakers, please contact any of the students.</p>
2016-04-29 20:00:00 to 2016-04-29 21:00:00Nihar Shah (UC Berkeley)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2025SystemX Seminarhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/systemx-seminar-28
<p>More accurate prognosis of hormone-positive early stage breast cancer patients offers the opportunity to make more informed follow-up choices, for example the addition of adjuvant chemotherapy. Traditionally, pathologists have prognosticated these cancers using conventional staging, tumor proliferation index, and a small set of morphological features manually scored from H&amp;E slides. This information may be combined with the immunohistochemical (IHC) protein expression of the tumor. The rich information in these slides is summarized in terms of a simple univariate score such as the proportion of positively staining tumor nuclei. To investigate whether there is additional prognostic information in both the H&amp;E and IHC slides, we constructed a prognostic model to predict recurrence risk from an exhaustive set of automatically calculated image features. On our whole slide cohort, the image-feature based recurrence risk binary classifier outperforms using clinical and expression covariates alone. Prognostic features include nuclei size, nuclear atypia, co-expression of ER and Ki67, lymphocyte density and stromal features. Our machine-learning based approach is a viable way to discover and integrate information holistically from different clinical prognostic data sources including clinical/demographic, H&amp;E slide-based features and, for the first time, IHC stained slides.</p>
2016-04-28 23:30:00 to 2016-04-29 00:30:00Dr. David Knowles (Stanford)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2093EE292L Seminar: Transistor and Logic Design for 5nm Node and Beyondhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/ee292l-seminar-transistor-and-logic-design-5nm-node-and-beyond
<p>We use rigorous physics-based analysis of transistors scaled to 5nm design rules and beyond, considering several flavors of FinFETs and nanowires with Si and non-Si channels. The transistors are placed into a representative standard library cell for Power-Performance-Area (PPA) analysis. The PPA analysis reveals that Middle-Of-Line (MOL) RC dominates circuit behavior at 5nm design rules. Optimization of the energy-delay trade-off points towards continuing the ongoing fin depopulation trend and possible transition from FinFETs to nanowires. Besides, innovative approaches to building library cells provide simultaneous improvements in energy consumption and in routability of the short library cells. These observations point to the rising role of random variability in determining chip area and cost. We perform comparative analysis of major variability mechanisms and their implications on PPA outcome for different technologies, ranging from 130nm to 2nm design rules.</p>
2016-04-28 23:30:00Victor Moroz, Ph.D. (Synopsys)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2095ISL Colloquiumhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/isl-colloquium-12
<p>The challenges of controlling dynamic systems with multiple objectives are related to and furthermore include problems in multi-player dynamic games, multiobjective optimization, and decentralized control and estimation. The additional complexity is introduced by nonlinearities, time delays and perturbations in dynamic models, as well as various state, input and communication constraints. In this talk, a number of results related to control and coordination of multiple dynamic systems pursuing multiple objectives, will be presented. To illustrate these results some particular examples of controlling multiple agents pursuing multiple objectives such as guaranteed capture or evasion, collision avoidance, and coverage control, will be presented.</p>
2016-04-28 23:15:00 to 2016-04-29 00:15:00Dusan Stipanovic (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2033OSA Seminarhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/osa-seminar-2
<p><strong>Workshop Summary: </strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">In this workshop we will present an overview of the capabilities in Zemax OpticStudio 16 and work through a step by step example which illustrates how to:</p>
<ul><li>Setup a sequential optical system with multiple elements</li>
<li>Build a merit function and evaluate figures of merit</li>
<li>Compare the performance of surface types</li>
<li>Define variables and optimize a system</li>
<li>Compare local and global optimization</li>
<li>Optimize for glass</li>
<li>Convert a sequential design to a non-sequential system</li>
</ul><p><a href="http://goo.gl/forms/tbAQU9r791" target="_blank"><strong>RSVP is Required</strong></a></p>
<p><em>This workshop is sponsored by Stanford OSA</em></p>
2016-04-28 23:00:00 to 2016-04-29 00:30:00Liz Gerrish; Dr. Mark Nicholson (Zemax OpticStudio 16)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2091SmartGrid Seminarhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/smartgrid-seminar-14
<p>The talk will focus on research at Florida/Inria on harnessing flexible loads to create virtual storage. The goal is to address volatility from high penetration of renewable energy from the wind and sun. It is argued that these resources come at essentially zero marginal cost, which is a major barrier to innovation. Solutions to this dilemma will be proposed; it is hoped that this will lead to constructive debate — especially in view of CAISO's current debates on the future of DSM.</p>
<p><em>Based on joint research with Profs. Ana Busic and Prabir Barooah</em></p>
<hr /><p> </p>
<p>Our speakers will discuss exciting new ideas and technologies that are changing the electricity industry. The theme of the seminar series is on smart grids and energy systems, with speakers from academic institutions and industry. The hour-long seminars, including ample time for discussion, are held at 1:00 pm or 1:15 pm approximately every Thursday.</p>
<p>This seminar is offered as a 1 unit seminar course, CEE 272T/EE292T for interested students. This course can be repeated for credit for the students.</p>
2016-04-28 20:30:00Sean Meyn (University of Florida)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2077Undergraduate Admit Weekendhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/undergraduate-admit-weekend
<p>Welcome admitted students!</p>
<p>We hope you enjoy your time on campus and see you around the engineering quad.</p>
2016-04-28 17:00:00 to 2016-04-30 18:30:00N/Ahttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/2096EE380 Computer Systems Colloquiumhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/ee380-computer-systems-colloquium-29
<p>Deep learning has been very successful for a variety of difficult perceptual tasks. This suggests that the sensory pathways in the brain might also be using back-propagation to ensure that lower cortical areas compute features that are useful to higher cortical areas. Neuroscientists have not taken this possibility seriously because there are so many obvious objections: Neurons do not communicate real numbers; the output of a neuron cannot represent both a feature of the world and the derivative of a cost function with respect to the neuron's output; the feedback connections to lower cortical areas that are needed to communicate error derivatives do not have the same weights as the feedforward connections; the feedback connections do not even go to the neurons from which the feedforward connections originate; there is no obvious source of labelled data. I will describe joint work with Timothy Lillicrap on ways of overcoming these objections.</p>
2016-04-27 23:30:00 to 2016-04-28 00:30:00Geoffrey Hinton (Google)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2036SCIENhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/scien-10
<p>Many creative ideas are being proposed for image sensor designs, and these may be useful in applications ranging from consumer photography to computer vision. To understand and evaluate each new design, we must create a corresponding image-processing pipeline that transforms the sensor data into a form that is appropriate for the application. The need to design and optimize these pipelines is time-consuming and costly. I explain a method that combines machine learning and image systems simulation that automates the pipeline design. The approach is based on a new way of thinking of the image-processing pipeline as a large collection of local linear filters. Finally, I illustrate how the method has been used to design pipelines for consumer photography and mobile imaging.</p>
2016-04-27 23:15:00 to 2016-04-28 00:15:00Professor Brian Wandell (Stanford)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2044Fuse: study nighthttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/fuse-study-night-20
<p>Spring quarter '16 study nights are every Tuesday at 8pm in the Fuse room (Packard 318).</p>
<p>Snacks will be provided to fuel good work. We hope to see you there!</p>
<p> </p>
<p><em><strong>-Fuse</strong></em></p>
2016-04-27 03:00:00N/Ahttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/2054Applied Physics/Physics Colloquiumhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/applied-physicsphysics-colloquium-22
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<p>Optical frequency combs are providing powerful tools for laser spectroscopy. Mode-locked femtosecond lasers and related emerging miniaturized devices can produce a large number of precisely evenly spaced spectral lines. Almost two decades ago, such spectral combs were introduced as tools for optical frequency metrology, motivated by the challenges of precision laser spectroscopy of atomic hydrogen as tests for fundamental physics laws. Current precision spectroscopy of hydrogen with frequency combs focuses on the "proton size puzzle", i.e. the discrepancy between the rms proton charge radius determined from Lamb shift measurements in ordinary hydrogen and in muonic hydrogen. Laser frequency combs provide the long-missing clockwork for optical atomic clocks, which are now approaching relative frequency uncertainties of 10-18. Distant clocks can be compared via optical fiber links at the 10-19 level, opening new opportunities for relativistic geodesy and astronomical interferometry. Frequency combs in space will permit new tests of Einstein's equivalence principle. As calibration tools for astronomical spectrographs, frequency combs are facilitating the search for exoplanets, and they may lead to direct evidence for the accelerating expansion of space in our universe. Laser combs are also enabling novel broadband molecular spectroscopy. They can dramatically improve the resolution and recording speed of Fourier spectrometers, and they are creating intriguing new opportunities for highly multiplexed nonlinear spectroscopy and microscopy.</p>
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<p>Held Tuesdays at 4:30 pm in the William R. Hewlett Teaching Center, room 201.</p>
<p>Refreshments in the lobby of Varian Physics at 4:15 pm.</p>
<p><em>Spring 2015/2016, Committee: M. Schleier-Smith (Chair), G. Gratta, B. Lev, S. Zhang</em></p>
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2016-04-26 23:30:00 to 2016-04-27 00:30:00Theodor Hänsch/Hofstadter Lecturer (Univ. of Munich)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2058US-ATMC (EE402T) Seminarhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/us-atmc-ee402t-seminar-1
<hr /><p><span>Over the course of our 9 week public seminar series, we will explore the most recent trends, patterns, and challenges of entrepreneurship in Asia and their relevance to Silicon Valley and the U.S. Guest speakers include entrepreneurs, investors and mentors, and other experts on the current entrepreneurial ecosystems of major Asia economies.</span></p>
2016-04-26 23:30:00Panelists: David Chang, David Lee, Catharina Minhttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/2069Robert Hofstadter Memorial Lecturehttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/general/robert-hofstadter-memorial-lecture
<p>Observations in atomic, molecular, and optical physics have played a central role in reshaping our concepts of light and matter. The lecture will lead from historical milestones to modern frontiers, including spectroscopic precision tests of fundamental physics laws, ultraprecise clocks, and ultracold quantum matter. Large mysteries remain, and our concepts of light and matter are likely to undergo further dramatic changes in the future.</p>
<hr /><p><em>This lecture is free and open to the public.</em><br /><em>Any questions, please contact Ping Feng at 650-723-9555</em></p>
2016-04-26 03:00:00Prof. Theodor W. Hänsch (Ludwig-Maximilian University)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2087OSA Seminarhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/osa-seminar-1
<p>From the popular press to possibly-questionable crowdfunding proposals, "holographic" displays seem to be everywhere this year. But are any of these actually holographic? And if not, what is a real holographic display? In this talk I explain why true holographic displays are not as far from deployment as one might think, despite their massive electro-optical and computational requirements, and describe how they will provide the ultimate in interactive visual user experience.</p>
2016-04-25 23:30:00Dr. V. Michael Bove, Jr. (MIT Media Lab)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2083IT-Forumhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/it-forum-22
<p>In this talk, I will present a novel framework of applying deep neural network (DNN) to the universal discrete denoising problem. DNN has recently shown remarkable performance improvements in diverse applications, and most of the success are based on the supervised learning framework. While successful in many applications, it is not straightforward to apply such framework to the universal discrete denoising problem, in which a denoiser tries to estimate an unknown finite-valued clean data based on its noisy observation. The reason is because the ground-truth label for a denoiser is the clean data subject to the estimation and is clearly not available for training a denoiser. In this work, I follow the framework of DUDE (Discrete Universal DEnoiser) and devise a novel way of training a DNN as a discrete denoiser solely based on the given noisy observation. The key idea is to utilize an unbiased estimate of the true loss of a denoiser and define a novel objective function for DNN based on the "pseudo-labels". The resulting scheme is dubbed as Neural DUDE, and the experimental results show that Neural DUDE significantly outperforms the original DUDE, which is the state-of-the-art on several discrete denoising problems. Furthermore, we show that Neural DUDE overcomes the critical limitation of DUDE, namely, it is much more robust to the choice of the hyper-parameter and has a concrete way of choosing the best hyper-parameter for given data. Such property makes Neural DUDE an attractive choice in practice. Finally, I will conclude with some potential future research directions, such as extending the framework to the denoising of continuous-valued data.</p>
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<p>The Information Theory Forum (IT-Forum) at Stanford ISL is an interdisciplinary academic forum which focuses on mathematical aspects of information processing. With a primary emphasis on information theory, we also welcome researchers from signal processing, learning and statistical inference, control and optimization to deliver talks at our forum. We also warmly welcome industrial affiliates in the above fields. The forum is typically held in Packard 202 every Friday at 1:00 pm during the academic year.</p>
<p>The Information Theory Forum is organized by graduate students Jiantao Jiao and Yanjun Han. To suggest speakers, please contact any of the students.</p>
2016-04-22 20:00:00 to 2016-04-22 21:00:00Taesup Moon (DGIST) https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2024SystemX Seminarhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/systemx-seminar-27
<p>Increased demands of batteries for applications in consumer electronics, electric vehicle and grid present opportunities and challenges for rechargeable batteries. This lecture will analyze the nature of energy storage, the existing technology and present the promising future batteries, which can have significantly higher energy density, lower cost, better safety and longer life. Novel battery chemistries and materials are key for a revolutionary change.</p>
2016-04-21 23:30:00Professor Yi Cui (Stanford)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2081ISL Colloquiumhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/isl-colloquium-13
<p>Motivated by problems in single cell flow cytometry, we conduct an axiomatic study of the problem of estimating the strength of a known causal relationship between a pair of continuous variables. We propose that an estimate of causal strength should be based on the conditional distribution of the effect given the cause (and not on the driving distribution of the cause), and study dependence measures on conditional distributions. Shannon capacity, appropriately regularized, emerges as a natural measure under these axioms. We examine the problem of calculating Shannon capacity from samples and design a simple, consistent and efficient fixed k-nearest neighbor estimator. The estimators strongly outperform state of the art in single cell flow cytometry analytics in terms of sample complexity.</p>
<p>An important component of this design involves efficient estimation of mutual information between a pair of random variables from i.i.d. samples drawn from an unknown joint density. The most popular mutual information estimator is one proposed by Kraskov and Stogbauer and Grassberger (KSG) in 2004, and is nonparametric and based on the distances of each sample to its k-nearest neighboring sample, where k is a fixed small integer. Despite its widespread use (part of scientific software packages), theoretical properties of this estimator have been largely unexplored. We demonstrate that the KSG estimator is consistent while identifying an upper bound on the rate of convergence of the bias as a function of number of samples. We argue that the superior performance benefits of the KSG estimator stems from a curious "correlation boosting" effect and build on this intuition to modify the KSG estimator in novel ways to construct a superior estimator.</p>
2016-04-21 23:15:00Prof. Pramod Viswanath (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2080SmartGrid Seminarhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/smartgrid-seminar-13
<p>Presenters from NERC and the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) will discuss the integration efforts, data collection, and analysis of distributed energy resources to enhance system reliability and expand existing market design to a broader set of resources. An overview of CAISO's innovative facility design and Smart Grid project demonstration will also be presented.</p>
<hr /><p> </p>
<p>Our speakers will discuss exciting new ideas and technologies that are changing the electricity industry. The theme of the seminar series is on smart grids and energy systems, with speakers from academic institutions and industry. The hour-long seminars, including ample time for discussion, are held at 1:00 pm or 1:15 pm approximately every Thursday.</p>
<p>This seminar is offered as a 1 unit seminar course, CEE 272T/EE292T for interested students. This course can be repeated for credit for the students.</p>
2016-04-21 20:30:00Donna Pratt (North American Electric Reliability Corporation); John Goodin (CA Independent System Operator)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2076EE380 Computer Systems Colloquiumhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/ee380-computer-systems-colloquium-28
<p>TBA</p>
2016-04-20 23:30:00 to 2016-04-21 00:30:00Eric Horvitz (Stanford; Microsoft)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2035SCIENhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/scien-9
<p>The Camera Culture Group at the MIT Media Lab aims to create a new class of imaging platforms. This talk will discuss three tracks of research: femto photography, retinal imaging, and 3D displays.<br />Femto Photography consists of femtosecond laser illumination, picosecond-accurate detectors and mathematical reconstruction techniques allowing researchers to visualize propagation of light. Direct recording of reflected or scattered light at such a frame rate with sufficient brightness is nearly impossible. Using an indirect 'stroboscopic' method that records millions of repeated measurements by careful scanning in time and viewpoints we can rearrange the data to create a 'movie' of a nanosecond long event. Femto photography and a new generation of nano-photography (using ToF cameras) allow powerful inference with computer vision in presence of scattering.</p>
<p>EyeNetra is a mobile phone attachment that allows users to test their own eyesight. The device reveals corrective measures thus bringing vision to billions of people who would not have had access otherwise. Another project, eyeMITRA, is a mobile retinal imaging solution that brings retinal exams to the realm of routine care, by lowering the cost of the imaging device to a 10th of its current cost and integrating the device with image analysis software and predictive analytics. This provides early detection of Diabetic Retinopathy that can change the arc of growth of the world's largest cause of blindness.</p>
<p>Finally the talk will describe novel lightfield cameras and lightfield displays that require a compressive optical architecture to deal with high bandwidth requirements of 4D signals.</p>
2016-04-20 23:15:00 to 2016-04-21 00:15:00Professor Ramesh Raskar (MIT Media Lab)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2043Fuse: study nighthttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/fuse-study-night-20
<p>Spring quarter '16 study nights are every Tuesday at 8pm in the Fuse room (Packard 318).</p>
<p>Snacks will be provided to fuel good work. We hope to see you there!</p>
<p> </p>
<p><em><strong>-Fuse</strong></em></p>
2016-04-20 03:00:00N/Ahttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/2054Applied Physics/Physics Colloquiumhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/applied-physicsphysics-colloquium-21
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<p>Held Tuesdays at 4:30 pm in the William R. Hewlett Teaching Center, room 201.</p>
<p>Refreshments in the lobby of Varian Physics at 4:15 pm.</p>
<p><em>Spring 2015/2016, Committee: M. Schleier-Smith (Chair), G. Gratta, B. Lev, S. Zhang</em></p>
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2016-04-19 23:30:00 to 2016-04-20 00:30:00Hakeem Oluseyi (Florida Institute of Technology)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2057US-ATMC (EE402T) Seminarhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/us-atmc-ee402t-seminar-0
<hr /><p>Over the course of our 9 week public seminar series, we will explore the most recent trends, patterns, and challenges of entrepreneurship in Asia and their relevance to Silicon Valley and the U.S. Guest speakers include entrepreneurs, investors and mentors, and other experts on the current entrepreneurial ecosystems of major Asia economies.</p>
2016-04-19 23:30:00Dr. Edward Rubesch (owner, Sequoya; Thammasat University faculty)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2068EE292L Seminar: Nano manufacturinghttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/ee292l-seminar-nano-manufacturing
<p>This presentation will begin with a brief background on GPU (Graphic Process Unit) and its evolution in the past two decades along with the advance of Moore's law. It would then lead to the discussion of Moore's law in present and "More Moore's". As NVIDIA is transforming to a visual computing company participating in the growing market of Deep Learning, Artificial Intelligence, and Autonomous Driving, the presenter would use company's latest flagship made by 16nm FinFET technology to illustrate the significance of the nano-manufacturing technology. He will describe the technological challenges to manufacture such a complicated chip in order to achieve performance, perfection, and precision required for the product. In addition, "More than Moore" will be discussed in the context of heterogeneous integration of GPU and HBM (High Bandwidth Memory) on Si Interposer for high performance computing. At last, some perspectives on semiconductor industry in the foreseeable future will be shared.</p>
2016-04-19 23:30:00Dr. John Chen (NVIDIA)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2082EE Distinguished Lecture: Precise Timing and Localization in Indoor Spaceshttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/department/ee-distinguished-lecture-precise-timing-and-localization-indoor-spaces
<p>Over 300 years ago, an English carpenter realized that the key to safely navigating the ocean was being able to precisely measure time. Since then, timing and localization technologies have continued to push the limits of technology resulting in systems like GPS and our most sophisticated scientific instruments. Our new challenge in localization is providing coverage for indoor spaces where barriers attenuate and scatter radio signals. Precise indoor localization has the potential to enable applications ranging from asset tracking, indoor navigation and augmented reality all the way to highly optimized beam forming for improved spatial capacity of wireless networks.</p>
<p>In this talk, I will describe a localization system that uses time synchronized beacons with a combination of Bluetooth Low-Energy (BLE) and ultrasonic signals that are able to provide decimeter-ranging accuracy. The ultrasonic transmissions are designed to be inaudible to humans, but still detectable by microphones found on standard mobile devices. We are able to further improve localization performance by fusing information from the phone's IMU as well as constraints derived from building floor plans. As these systems scale, we show how pedestrian range-based Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) can be used to bootstrap the beaconing infrastructure as well as detect and correct configuration faults.</p>
2016-04-19 23:15:00 to 2016-04-20 00:15:00Anthony Rowe (Carnegie Mellon University)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2047Hack Overflowhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/hack-overflow
<p>Stanford Women in Computer Science's annual hackathon, HackOverflow, will take place on April 16th from 10am to 10pm - this year's theme is mobile + web + design. Through the event, we hope to encourage beginning programmers to participate in hackathons and to experience the practical applications of CS. But you don't need to be female or a beginner to participate! Anyone interested in programming, design, or just hackathons in general is welcome.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong><a href="https://kyliejue.typeform.com/to/ca4eky" target="_blank">Please Register</a></strong></p>
2016-04-16 17:00:00 to 2016-04-17 05:00:00NAhttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/2049IT-Forumhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/it-forum-21
<p>Massive MIMO is one of the highlights of the envisioned 5G communication systems. In the massive MIMO paradigm, the base station is equipped with a number of antennas, typically much larger than the number of users served. While many issues behind the design of multicellular massive MIMO systems have been studied extensively, security of massive MIMO has not been addressed in most part. In this talk, we provide a brief introduction to physical layer security and massive MIMO before we discuss major vulnerabilities of massive MIMO as well as potential defense strategies.</p>
<p>To that end, we consider a single-cell downlink massive MIMO system in the presence of attackers capable of simultaneous jamming and eavesdropping. We show that, classical attacks of data jamming and data eavesdropping can be simultaneously rendered useless: as the number of antennas grow, with proper precoding and power control, mobiles can simultaneously achieve (1) full equivocation without the need to use wiretap encoding under data eavesdropping and (2) no-attack achievable rates under data jamming. However, we introduce a new attack strategy that involves jamming pilot signals and eavesdropping in succession and show significant reductions in the achievable secrecy rate, even in the asymptotic regime in the number of antennas. To counter this attack, we develop a defense strategy in which we use a secret key to encrypt the pilot sequence assignments, rather than encrypt the data. We show that hiding the training signal assignments from the attacker enables the mobiles to achieve secure degrees of freedom, identical to the achievable degrees of freedom under no attack.</p>
2016-04-15 20:00:00 to 2016-04-15 21:00:00Can Emre Koksal (Ohio State University)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2023SystemX Seminarhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/systemx-seminar-26
<p>In the ongoing age of active implantable medical devices there is an ever-present need to safely provide electrical power an exploding number of medical implant technologies. In some cases, such as cardiac pacemakers or deep brain stimulators, single large batteries may be designed to last years before needing to be surgically replaced. However, in other cases such as commercially available cochlear implants and retinal prostheses, power is delivered continuously and transcutaneously via a pair of inductively-coupled coils. The present talk describes the inherent tradeoffs present in the real-world choices an implant designer makes in the construction of a power system, using the Oculeve (a startup spun out of Stanford in 2011) lacrimal stimulator as a case study of a successful implant design effort.</p>
2016-04-14 23:30:00 to 2016-04-15 00:30:00James Loudinhttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/2020ISL Colloquiumhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/isl-colloquium-11
<p>We propose and analyze a family of information processing systems, where a finite set of experts or servers are employed to extract information about a stream of incoming jobs. Each job is associated with a hidden label drawn from some prior distribution. An inspection by an expert produces a noisy outcome that depends both on the job's hidden label and the type of the expert, and occupies the expert for a finite time duration. A decision maker's task is to dynamically assign inspections so that the resulting outcomes can be used to accurately recover the labels of all jobs, while keeping the system stable. Among our chief motivations are applications in crowd-sourcing, diagnostics, and experiment designs, where one wishes to efficiently learn the nature of a large number of items, using a finite pool of computational resources or human agents. We focus on the capacity of such an information processing system. Given a level of accuracy guarantee, we ask how many experts are needed in order to stabilize the system, and through what inspection architecture. Our main result provides an adaptive inspection policy that is asymptotically optimal in the following sense: the ratio between the required number of experts under our policy and the theoretical optimal converges to one, as the probability of error in label recovery tends to zero. Joint work with Laurent Massoulie (MSR-Inria, Palaiseau, France).</p>
2016-04-14 23:15:00 to 2016-04-15 00:15:00Kuang Xu (Stanford GSB)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2032Stanford x Intel Demo Dayhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/stanford-x-intel-demo-day
<p><strong>Stanford IEEE and Intel present StanfordxIntel FPGA Demo Day</strong></p>
<p>DEMO # 1: Synthetic Aperture Radar</p>
<p>DEMO # 2: FPGA Drawbot</p>
<p>DEMO # 3: Stereo Vision</p>
<p>DEMO # 4: Object Detection</p>
<p>DEMO # 5: Terasic Smart Car</p>
<p>DEMO # 6: Terasic Spider</p>
<p>DEMO # 7: Battery Management System</p>
2016-04-14 22:00:00 to 2016-04-15 01:00:00Various Demonstrationshttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/2055SmartGrid Seminarhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/smartgrid-seminar-12
<p>The flagship microgrid at UC San Diego (UCSD) is the most often cited microgrid within CA given the fact that it is the largest, most diversified microgrid at 42 MW and self generates 85% of its own electricity on an annual basis. Because of the unique testing capability on the UCSD microgrid, and experience with testing energy storage, UCSD was recently chosen by ARPAe to conduct economic valuation and testing of some of the most advanced energy storage systems under real world market conditions. The presentation will also include an overview of the unique economic valuation of ARPAe advanced energy storage systems and how testing protocols have been developed that will simulate how energy storage will operate in modern wholesale markets, including stacked applications. UCSD has developed battery-testing capability for both laboratory and grid connected conditions. This allows testing in a controlled isolated laboratory environment, as well as testing in grid connected conditions where the interaction of the energy storage systems with the grid connected devices can be observed and evaluated. Multiple test stands have been developed for both laboratory and grid connected conditions, allowing parallel testing to place of multiple battery energy storage systems. UCSD has developed charge/discharge profiles and duty cycles for energy storage that represent five use cases for energy storage applications using real time and day ahead wholesale and retail energy market data. The testing apparatus is capable of producing loading conditions and duty cycles representing these use cases. This approach allows achieving test results that represent a wide spectrum of use applications and allow determination of energy storage systems performance under a variety of conditions and allow identification of specific applications that specific battery chemistry and good battery configurations.</p>
2016-04-14 20:30:00William Torre (University of California San Diego)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2075EE380 Computer Systems Colloquiumhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/ee380-computer-systems-colloquium-27
<p>Sista is an adaptive optimizer using speculative inlining that is implemented entirely in Smalltalk, and is "live" in the system, meaning that the optimizer runs in the same run-time as the application and potentially can be interactively developed. Sista makes use of Smalltalk's support for first-class activation records (contexts), both to analyse the running system, and to allow manipulation of execution state to effect switching from unoptimized code to optimized code and back. Because Sista optimizes from bytecoded methods to bytecoded methods which are normal Smalltalk objects:</p>
<ul><li>Sista starts off "hot", code being already optimized when the system starts; and</li>
<li>Sista is platform-independent; the VM is responsible for generating processor-specific code.</li>
</ul>2016-04-13 23:30:00 to 2016-04-14 00:30:00Eliot Miranda and Clément Béra (Cadence Design Systems and INRIA)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2034SCIENhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/scien-8
<p>There are strong use-cases for augmented and mixed reality outside of entertainment. One particularly practical use is in the manufacturing industry. It's an industry with well-established workflows and product cycles, but also known problems and pinch-points. In this talk, we will walk through each step of the Product Lifecycle Management workflow and discuss how mixed reality is helping manufacturers each step of the way. We will also cover the background of mixed reality and the key differences between AR, MR, and VR.</p>
<p>After the talk, there will be a demo: The Canon MREAL System enables designers and engineers to review and interact with CAD designs. 3D designs can be viewed from any angle – including creating a cross section view for advanced visualization and design assessment.</p>
2016-04-13 23:15:00 to 2016-04-14 00:15:00Nicholas Frushour (Canon Mixed Reality)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2042 Mean Field Analysis: Applications, Convergence and the Rate of Convergencehttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/mean-field-analysis-applications-convergence-and-rate-convergence
<p>Mean-field analysis is a method to study large-scale and complex stochastic systems. The idea is to assume the states of nodes in a large-scale system are independently and identically distributed (i.i.d.). Based on this i.i.d. assumption, in a large-scale system, the interaction of a node to the rest of the system can be replaced with an "average" interaction, and the evolution of the system can then be modeled as a deterministic dynamical system, called a mean-field model. Then the macroscopic behaviors of the stochastic system can be approximated using the solution of the mean-field model, in particular, the stationary distribution of the stochastic system can be approximated using the equilibrium point of the mean-field model. This talk will first review a few applications of mean-field analysis and existing methods to prove the convergence of stationary distributions of stochastic systems to the equilibrium point of the mean-field model. Then, I will present a new method to prove not only the convergence but also the rate of convergence to the mean-field limit. The method identifies a fundamental connection between the perturbation theory for nonlinear systems and the convergence of mean-field models via Stein's method. This result quantifies the approximation error of using the mean-field solution for a finite-size stochastic system, which cannot be obtained under the existing methods that prove the convergence based on the interchange of the limits.</p>
2016-04-13 23:15:00Lei Ying (Arizona State University)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2064An Optical Turing Machine for Network Processinghttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/optical-turing-machine-network-processing
<p>The Optical Turing Machine (OTM) is an approach to digital optical processing that supports computation in the same format used for high-speed transmission. This talk identifies the key capabilities required to support native digital optical processing for typical in-network functions including forwarding, security, and filtering. Current analog and binary digital approaches – including optical transistors – are considered and shown insufficient for optical networks. The requirements for developing optical communication and computation using a single encoding are presented, as are the capabilities required for network computation. Recent results in regenerating N-PSK signals using non-degenerate PSA and multilevel amplitude squeezing are presented, with an analysis of several alternate approaches and their compatibility with optical computation. OTM was motivated by the need to support optical Internet routing, and this talk also presents the design for such a router based on decomposing the steps required for IP packet forwarding. Implementations of hop-count decrement and header matching are coupled with a recent simulation-based approach to variable-length packet merging that avoids recirculation, resulting in an all-optical data plane. A method for IPv4 checksum computation is presented and the implications of this design are considered, including the potential for chip and system integration.</p>
<p>For more information: http://www.isi.edu/touch/</p>
2016-04-13 21:00:00Joseph Touch (USC/ISI)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2066Fuse: study nighthttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/fuse-study-night-20
<p>Spring quarter '16 study nights are every Tuesday at 8pm in the Fuse room (Packard 318).</p>
<p>Snacks will be provided to fuel good work. We hope to see you there!</p>
<p> </p>
<p><em><strong>-Fuse</strong></em></p>
2016-04-13 03:00:00N/Ahttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/2054Applied Physics/Physics Colloquiumhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/applied-physicsphysics-colloquium-20
<p>In 2001 I created a Freshman Seminar class at the University of Minnesota entitled: "Everything I Know About Science I Learned from Reading Comic Books." This is a real physics class, that covers topics from Isaac Newton to the transistor, but there's not an inclined plane or pulley in sight. Rather, ALL the examples come from superhero comic books, and as much as possible, those cases where the superheroes get their physics right!</p>
<p>This class drew a great deal of media attention in 2002 with the release of the first Spider-Man film, and led to my writing a popular science book THE PHYSICS OF SUPERHEROES. My talk will show how superhero comic books can be used to illustrate fundamental physics principles. For example, was it "the fall" or "the webbing" that killed Gwen Stacy, Spider-Man's girlfriend in the classic Amazing Spider-Man # 121? How does Kitty Pryde from the X-Men comics and movies use quantum mechanics to walk through walls? Why does the Flash become heavier as he tries to run at the speed of light? All this, and the answers to such important real life questions as the chemical composition of Captain America's shield, and who is faster: Superman or the Flash? will be discussed. In my presentation I will describe the various ways that students' interest in these four-color adventurers can be leveraged to present real science in an accessible way. If superheroes can spark an interest in science in students and the general public – well, it wouldn't be the first time these heroes have saved the day!</p>
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<p>Held Tuesdays at 4:30 pm in the William R. Hewlett Teaching Center, room 201.</p>
<p>Refreshments in the lobby of Varian Physics at 4:15 pm.</p>
<p><em>Spring 2015/2016, Committee: M. Schleier-Smith (Chair), G. Gratta, B. Lev, S. Zhang</em></p>
2016-04-12 23:30:00 to 2016-04-13 00:30:00James Kakalios (Univ. of Minnesota)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2056EE292L Seminar: Moore’s Law at Fifty: No End in Sighthttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/ee292l-seminar-moore%25E2%2580%2599s-law-fifty-no-end-sight
<p>Moore's Law is an observation that a transistor – the fundamental building block of the digital age – will decrease in cost at a steady, exponential rate. This decrease in cost as well as transistor size over the past 50 years has also led to dramatic increases in compute power and energy efficiency and transformed our world with ever-more powerful smart phones, tablets, personal computers and data centers. It has also enabled computing to become a powerful yet invisible force in our homes, offices, cars, factories and much more. These imperatives are the reason Moore's Law will continue, and motivated teams will continue to find innovative solutions to the engineering challenges of the day, just as they have in the past. This talk will provide some examples of how complex problems have been overcome in recent technology nodes, including those from the field of Computational Lithography. Inverse Lithography and Source Mask Optimization are two such examples that have helped extend the life of 193 patterning. Such innovations, fed by a rich technology pipeline, give us confidence that Moore's Law will continue.</p>
2016-04-12 23:30:00Vivek Singh, Ph.D. (Intel)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2065US-ATMC (EE402T) Seminarhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/us-atmc-ee402t-seminar
<p>This week's presenter will discuss topics such as: opportunity trends and entrepreneurial innovation in China today, patterns of VC investment — what's hot and what's not, labor pool competition between startups and newly successful giant firms such as Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent, exit trends, and implications for the Silicon Valley business community. Managing Partner at GGV since 2013, Hans was one of the earliest investors and a former board member at Xiaomi. He regularly appears in the Forbes Midas List of top VCs, and he has been recognized by The Founder and CBN News magazines as a Top-10 most entrepreneur-friendly VC in China. At GGV, Hans focuses on consumer mobile internet, cross-border ecommerce, IoT, and online education investments in both China and the US. This is the second of nine weekly public seminars in our series on "Entrepreneurship in Asian High-Tech Industries," hosted by Dr. Richard Dasher, Director of the US-ATMC and Consulting Professor at Stanford.</p>
2016-04-12 23:30:00Hans Tung (Managing Partner of GGV Capital)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2067HappEE Hourhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/happee-hour
<p><strong>Join us for HappEE Hour this Friday at 5 PM!</strong></p>
<p>We will have Thai food, as well as an assortment of beverages.<br />Please bring proof of age (21+) if you plan on drinking alcohol.</p>
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<p>See you there!</p>
<p>GSEE</p>
2016-04-09 00:00:00NAhttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/2053SystemX Seminarhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/systemx-seminar-25
<p>Next generation (xG) wireless communications impose requirements on the data rate, spectral efficiency, and latency (among others) that are higher than those for today's systems by several orders of magnitude. Despite the many different perceptions of xG that exist, I envision that next generation wireless communications built on emergent wireless paradigms will involve unprecedented interactions between the MAC layer and the PHY layer. These transformative wireless paradigms will also necessarily be fueled by circuit design innovations, due to the extreme system requirements.</p>
<p>As an example, full-duplex (FD) wireless is an emergent wireless communication paradigm that can greatly improve wireless network performance but is also fraught with fundamental challenges in the design of integrated radios. FD operation involves simultaneous transmission and reception at the same frequency, resulting in the tremendous transmitter self-interference at the receiver input. This self-interference can be a billion times more powerful than the desired signal to be received.</p>
<p>In this talk, I will present a system design methodology that breaks the boundaries between the traditional functional domains of the radio through novel circuit design. First, I will introduce a noise-cancelling, self-interference-cancelling receiver that uses a co-design between a self-interference canceller and a noise-cancelling receiver to enable antenna interfaces with low transmitter-to-receiver isolation. Next, I will introduce frequency-domain equalization at radio frequencies (RF), a technique that leverages signal processing concepts traditionally implemented in the digital signal-processing block to achieve wideband self-interference cancellation (SIC). After that, I will talk about a joint optimization across the antenna, analog, and digital domains that achieves 85dB overall SIC, enabling a practical FD link. At the end of the talk, I will discuss my collaborative work with network theorists on power allocation algorithms and rate-gain characterization for OFDMA-based FD wireless networks. I will also talk about my collaboration with researcher from the field of MEMS on realizing tunable frequency-division-duplexing RF systems.</p>
2016-04-07 23:30:00 to 2016-04-08 00:30:00Jin Zhou (Columbia University)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2018EE380 Computer Systems Colloquiumhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/ee380-computer-systems-colloquium-26
<p>Humans have long been inspired by the incredible abilities of ants. They can go anywhere, build vast underground networks, and carry objects more than 100 times their weight. Indeed, despite their diminutive size, ants seem to be able to affect the human world quite a lot. We may be tempted to attribute this amazing capability primarily to the muscular strength of insects, which is certainly impressive, however as Archimedes adeptly pointed out over 2000 years ago, the ground reaction forces are equally important:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><strong>"Give me a place to stand and with a lever I will move the whole world''</strong> <em>–Archimedes</em>.</p>
<p>While humans rely on gravity and friction, both of these quantities become problematic as mass reduces with volume. At small scales, insects instead exploit interaction mechanisms like adhesion that, unlike coulomb friction, scale with area and do not depend on the magnitude of a normal force. However, adhesion without a method of release is not useful; an insect or robot would become stuck and could not move. In addition, at smaller scales, legged locomotion requires higher step rates than at larger scales to maintain the same absolute velocity. Therefore, the "controllable" adhesives that ants use must engage and disengage more quickly at small scales.</p>
<p>The goal of this work is to build microrobots that are inspired by ants to apply forces that are large enough to appreciably affect the human scale world. We want to build microrobots that can not only explore a disaster site in a search and rescue mission, but pull the survivors to safety when they are found. We have developed the first step toward that goal: a family of "µTug" robots that use a controllable adhesive, just like ants, to move objects up to 2000 times their size, while still being able to run at 30Hz. In order to build such robots, we examine 4 core properties of the adhesives and the actuators required to use them. We also explore the interactions of microrobots working as teams to move loads well beyond the capability of a single robot. Unlike many microrobots, the µTugs are shown to achieve near perfect sharing of load so force capabilities for a team are simply linear with number of robots. Thus a team of 6 microrobots, with a total mass of 100g, was capable of exerting enough force to move the author's 1800kg automobile.</p>
2016-04-06 23:30:00 to 2016-04-07 00:30:00David Christensen (Stanford)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2030SCIEN Talkhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/scien-talk
<p>We present a new microscopy technique for 3D functional neuroimaging in live brain tissue. The device is a simple light field fluorescence microscope allowing full volume acquisition in a single shot and can be miniaturized into a portable implant. Our computational methods first rely on spatial and temporal sparsity of fluorescence signals to identify and precisely localize neurons. We compute for each neuron a unique pattern, the light-field signature, that accounts for the effects of optical scattering and aberrations. The technique then yields a precise localization of active neurons and enables quantitative measurement of fluorescence with individual neuron spatial resolution and at high speeds, all without ever reconstructing a volume image. Experimental results are shown on live Zebrafish.</p>
<p>More Information: <a href="http://www.nicolaspegard.com" target="_blank">www.nicolaspegard.com</a></p>
2016-04-06 23:15:00 to 2016-04-07 00:15:00Dr. Nicolas Pégard (U.C. Berkeley)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2021Applied Physics/Physics Colloquiumhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/applied-physicsphysics-colloquium-19
<p>Investigations of many-body physics in an AMO context often employ a static optical lattice to create a periodic potential. Such systems, while capable of exploring, e.g., the Hubbard model, lack the fully emergent crystalline order found in solid state systems whose stiffness is not imposed externally, but arises dynamically. Our multimode cavity QED experiment will introduce a new method of generating fully emergent and compliant optical lattices supporting phonon-like excitations to the ultracold atom toolbox. The system provides new avenues to explore quantum liquid crystalline order. We will report experimental progress, including our recent observation of a "supermode-density-wave-polariton condensate." Future employment of spinful atoms will provide opportunities to explore quantum neural networks and the order of short-range spin glasses.</p>
2016-04-05 23:30:00 to 2016-04-06 00:30:00Benjamin Lev (Stanford)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2029SystemX Headlights Workshophttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/general/systemx-headlights-workshop-0
<p>SystemX annual Headlights Workshop this year focuses on advances in wireless technologies and their applications.</p>
<p>The opening day covers the evolving wireless communications technology itself (5G, Wi-Fi, PAN/BAN) and their arising new challenges: efficient spectrum use, the movement to higher frequencies of operation, challenges in concurrency. We are honored to have Dr. Chih-Lin I, China Mobile's Chief Scientist of Wireless Technologies, lead off that day with a keynote talk.</p>
<p>The second day topics are on the deployment, proliferation of wireless connectivity. Sessions will cover the rapidly developing wireless infrastructure, the emergence of new connected devices/new services, and some of the system technology challenges both have created. We are delighted to have Dr. Ken Stewart, Intel's Chief Wireless Technologist for Mobility, open the second day with a keynote. We are ending the conference with a panel on deployment opportunities and challenges that includes Dr. Craig Barratt, responsible for Access and Energy at Google; and Vijay Sammeta, San Jose's CIO.</p>
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<p>SystemX annual Headlights Workshop, this year focused on advances in wireless technologies and their applications.</p>
<p><strong>The event is by invitation only. </strong><strong>Please contact SystemX for more information.</strong></p>
2016-04-05 16:00:00 to 2016-04-07 00:00:00Varioushttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/1927EE Special Seminarhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/ee-special-seminar-1
<p>When the spatial scale goes down from macroscale to nanoscale, temporal scale will reduce to nano to femtosecond, and more importantly, the related energy scale of an externally applied field will drop for eighteen orders from joule to attojoule (1 nN times 1 nm = 6.42 eV), falling into the energy scale of the local fields of matter which consist of electronic structures, charge, molecular orbital and spin states. Therefore, at nanoscale, matters will show distinctly different performances from their bulk materials mainly due to the strong coupling between the local fields of matter and external applied fields, turning common materials such as carbon, even insulators, into functional nanomaterials with the exceptional properties that are required for nanoelectronics, spintronics as well as energy conversion devices. In this talk, I will demonstrate by our recent findings</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">(i) such exceptional functional properties in graphene, h-BN, transition metal dichalcogenides, black phosphorous and boron nanofilms;</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">(ii) fabrication of two-dimensional materials and their one- and three- dimensional derivates by merging top-down and bottom-up methodology;</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">(iii) their applications for sensors and generators.</p>
2016-04-04 22:15:00 to 2016-04-04 23:30:00Wanlin Guo (Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2015IT-Forumhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/it-forum-20
<p>A large range of problems in statistics, machine learning and signal processing can be cast as fitting a structured low-rank matrix to noisy data. A popular approach to the resulting rank-constrained optimization problem is convex SDP relaxation, which runs in polynomial time in principle and enjoys desirable statistical guarantees. For large-scale problems, however, the (super-)quadratic time complexity of SDPs is often too high. An attractive alternative is to run projected gradient descent directly over the space of low-rank matrices. This approach is highly scalable, but its convergence and statistical accuracy were unclear due to non-convexity. Here we develop a unified framework characterizing the convergence of this non-convex method as well as the statistical properties of the resulting solutions. Our results provide insights into why we should expect non-convex methods to work in general, and yield global guarantees for a large number of concrete problems, including matrix completion with real and one-bit observations, matrix decomposition, robust and sparse PCA and graph clustering. Our framework is powerful enough to accommodate nonlinear measurements, matrices with arbitrary rank, and the noisy, constrained setting with additional structures in the noise and target matrices, and moreover does not require resampling.</p>
2016-04-01 20:00:00 to 2016-04-01 21:00:00Yudong Chen (Cornell)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2022SystemX Alliance: Panel Discussionhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/general/systemx-alliance-panel-discussion
<p>This panel's intent is to review and discuss the past, present and especilally the future for the fabless model of semiconductor development. There will be 3 short presentations followed by a moderated q&amp;a.</p>
<p>Paul Franklin will drawn upon his extensive experience in Silicon Valley to bring us to the present. His talk will discuss the evolution of our industry, and now its growing consolidation.</p>
<p>Mike Gianfagna, with his perspective anchored in eSilicon, will talk to the emerging model of cloud-based tools, shared fab access and shared logistics management, all keeping the door open to ASIC development for the small to modest scale end product, as well as, for fabless semiconductor companies more generally.</p>
<p>Victor Peng, from Xilinx, will present the alternative model of repurposing of high volume but configurable standard products/platforms. FPGA's, and their programmable platform brethren: PSoCs/MPSoCs represent a faster and more developmentally economical manner of semiconductor product realization.</p>
2016-03-31 23:30:00 to 2016-04-01 00:30:00Victor Peng (Xilinx), Paul Franklin (Independent Advisor) and Mike Gianfagna (eSilicon)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2017EE380 Computer Systems Colloquiumhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/ee380-computer-systems-colloquium-25
<p>We describe the technology, operation principle and application of Quanergy's solid state LiDAR that is making 3D sensing ubiquitous, with its low price point, no moving parts, small form factor, light weight, low power consumption, long range, high resolution, high accuracy, long lifetime, and ability to operate in various environmental conditions. Advanced processors are used for performing in real time (1) LiDAR/Video data fusion for modeling and recognizing the environment around a vehicle, (2) object detection, classification, identification, and tracking, (3) scenario analysis and path planning based on deep learning, and (4) actuation of vehicle controls. Application areas are represented by 4 pillars: transportation (driver assistance, autonomous/self-driving vehicles, truck fleets, aerospace, railways, transportation infrastructure), security (smart homes, smart buildings, smart spaces, smart sites, smart cities, smart nations, border protection), industrial automation (factory/warehouse automation, mining, agriculture, robotics, drones), and mapping (terrestrial and aerial).</p>
2016-03-30 23:30:00 to 2016-03-31 00:30:00Louay A. Eldada, Ph.D. (Quanenrgy Systems)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2028SCIENhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/scien-6
<p>Historically, virtual reality (VR) with head-mounted displays (HMDs) is associated with computer-generated content and gaming applications. However, recent advances in 360 degree cameras facilitate omnidirectional capture of real-world environments to create content to be viewed on HMDs - a technology referred to as cinematic VR. This can be used to immerse the user, for instance, in a concert or sports event. The main focus of this talk will be on data representations for creating such immersive experiences.</p>
<p>In cinematic VR, videos are usually represented in a spherical format to account for all viewing directions. To achieve high-quality streaming of such videos to millions of users, it is crucial to consider efficient representations for this type of data, in order to maximize compression efficiency under resource constraints, such as the number of pixels and bitrate. We formulate the choice of representation as a multi-dimensional, multiple choice knapsack problem and show that the resulting representations adapt well to varying content.</p>
<p>Existing cinematic VR systems update the viewports according to head rotation, but do not support head translation or focus cues. We propose a new 3D video representation, referred to as depth augmented stereo panorama, to address this issue. We show that this representation can successfully induce head-motion parallax in a predefined operating range, as well as generate light fields across the observer's pupils, suitable for using with emerging light field HMDs.</p>
2016-03-30 23:15:00 to 2016-03-31 00:15:00Visiting Assistant Professor Haricharan Lakshman (Stanford)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/1903Applied Physics/Physics Colloquiumhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/applied-physicsphysics-colloquium-1
<p>The Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, the first focusing high-energy X-ray (3-79 keV) telescope in orbit, extends sensitive X-ray observations above the band pass where Chandra and XMM-Newton operate. With an unprecedented combination of sensitivity, spectral and imaging resolution above 10 keV, NuSTAR is advancing our understanding of black holes, neutron stars, and supernova remnants. Harrison will describe the mission, and present science highlights to-date spanning from probing the regions within a few gravitational radii of black holes to understanding the mechanisms that make massive stars explode.</p>
2016-03-29 23:30:00 to 2016-03-30 00:30:00Fiona Harrison (Caltech)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2014Applied Physics/Physics Colloquiumhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/applied-physicsphysics-colloquium-18
<p>On September 14th, 2015, the twin detectors of the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) made the first direct measurement of a passing gravitational wave. The signal was generated by the merger of two black holes which were approximately 29 and 36 solar masses. Although the event released about 3 solar masses of energy in a fraction of a second, when the signal reached the earth the distortion from the wave only changed the length of the 4 km long LIGO detectors by about 4e-18 meters. This was considered a large signal, with a signal-to-noise ratio of 24. In this talk, I will describe the remarkable instruments used for this detection, and discuss the plans to move forward so that these detectors can be regular contributors to the field of astronomy.</p>
2016-03-28 23:15:00 to 2016-03-29 00:15:00Brian T. Lantz (Department of Applied Physics, Stanford)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/2019Classes Begin - Spring Quarterhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/general/classes-begin-spring-quarter
<p>Welcome back!</p>
2016-03-28 15:00:00 to 2016-03-29 01:00:00N/Ahttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/2016Spring Breakhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/spring-break
<p>No classes during Spring Break</p>
2016-03-21 15:00:00 to 2016-03-26 00:00:00N/Ahttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/2011OSA Seminarhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/osa-seminar-0
<p>Adaptive optics enables imaging of the retina and testing of human vision on a cellular scale. In this talk, I will discuss the latest development in ophthalmic adaptive optics technology and show examples of how it is being used to measure structure and function of the human eye. I will also discuss where we can expect to see the technology being applied in the next ten years.</p>
2016-03-16 23:15:00 to 2016-03-17 00:15:00 Austin Roorda (University of California, Berkeley)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/1998Finals Weekhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/student/finals-week
<p>This week marks the final examinations for the Winter 2016 quarter.</p>
2016-03-14 15:00:00 to 2016-03-19 01:00:00NAhttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/2002SystemX Seminarhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/systemx-seminar-23
<p>The trend of modern electronic systems, such as wireless and wireline applications, demands increasing reconfigurability, bandwidth, and dynamic range, but low power and cost. On the other hand, the technology scaling is slowing down its pace and incurs significant cost particularly for analog designs. Those factors have driven the design community to pursue both new circuit and system architectures towards unprecedented flexibility, performance, and low cost. Wouldn't it be nice to have an electronic system that can be arbitrarily configured based on user's needs? In this talk, we will examine several such attempts recently demonstrated by our group members that show the importance/effectiveness of re-thinking the analog-digital boundary in both circuit and system level towards this goal. Several initial silicon prototypes achieve encouraging performance and flexibility in comparison with the state of the arts. More importantly, they tout the potential for many future extensions, and hopefully allow a different thinking for analog-digital interface circuit architecture to transform future electronic system designs.</p>
2016-03-11 00:30:00 to 2016-03-11 01:30:00Dr. Mike Shuo-Wei Chen, USChttps://ee.stanford.edu/node/1992ISL Colloquiumhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/isl-colloquium-10
<p>This paper develops a statistical theory to estimate an unknown factor structure based on financial high-frequency data. I derive a new estimator for the number of factors and derive consistent and asymptotically mixed-normal estimators of the loadings and factors under the assumption of a large number of cross-sectional and high-frequency observations. The estimation approach can separate factors for normal "continuous" and rare jump risk. The estimators for the loadings and factors are based on the principal component analysis of the quadratic covariation matrix. The estimator for the number of factors uses a perturbed eigenvalue ratio statistic. The results are obtained under general conditions, that allow for a very rich class of stochastic processes and for serial and cross-sectional correlation in the idiosyncratic components.</p>
2016-03-11 00:15:00 to 2016-03-11 01:15:00Markus Pelger (Stanford)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/1997SmartGrid Seminarhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/seminar/smartgrid-seminar-10
<p>Cyber and physical security are critical priorities for electric power utilities. The increasing complexity of the electrical grid and the growing sophistication of attackers drive the need for strong cyber security in all domains of the electric sector. It is a threat that is global in nature and affects every utility, from large state-owned utilities down to small co-ops. This seminar will review ongoing research in protective measures, threat and incident management, and situational awareness for the electric sector. It will also identify current research gaps that must be addressed to support the resiliency of the next-generation grid.</p>
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<p><strong>SmartGrid Seminar Winter 2016:</strong> Our speakers will discuss exciting new ideas and technologies that are changing the electricity industry. The theme of the seminar series is on smart grids and energy systems, with speakers from academic institutions and industry. The hour-long seminars, including ample time for discussion, are held at 1:00 pm or 1:15 pm approximately every Thursday.</p>
2016-03-10 21:30:00 to 2016-03-10 22:30:00Galen Rasche (Electric Power Research Institute)https://ee.stanford.edu/node/1923Bunyan Lecture: The Universes Beyond the Horizonhttps://ee.stanford.edu/event/general/bunyan-lecture-universes-beyond-horizon